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Tiny Glade 'built' its way to >600k sold in a month

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399 points TaurenHunter | 9 comments | 20 Nov 24 01:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.698s | source | bottom
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ykl ◴[20 Nov 24 06:00 UTC] No.42191172[source]▶
One of the many fun/cool things about Tiny Glade is that it quietly has one of the most advanced realtime global illumination lighting engines shipping in any game today, and it’s all completely custom for just this game. One of the devs, Tomasz Stachowiak, is a big deal in the realtime rendering world and previously was at DICE and Embark; at Embark he led the Kajiya experimental realtime GI project [1] that made quite a splash in the rendering world a while back.

The other dev, Anastasia Opara, is a big name in the procedural graphics world. She gave one of my favorite presentations on the topic a few years ago [2].

Anyhow if you can’t tell I’m a big fan of both the game and the devs. :)

[1] https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/kajiya [2] https://youtu.be/dpYwLny0P8M

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1. IshKebab ◴[20 Nov 24 07:50 UTC] No.42191653[source]▶
Yeah it looks amazing. I just wish it was more of an actual game. I guess lots of people like digital lego, but for me it seems like a ridiculously well polished toy or tech demo. I don't know why I'd play with it for more than an hour...
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2. lopis ◴[20 Nov 24 08:12 UTC] No.42191741[source]▶
They did introduce daily challenges/themes, which give you a sort of soft goal each day. But in the end, it's a zen art game more than anything.
3. robertlagrant ◴[20 Nov 24 09:28 UTC] No.42192172[source]▶
According to the article most people play it for around an hour.
4. jb_briant ◴[20 Nov 24 09:59 UTC] No.42192342[source]▶
I feel I made that mistake to dev the creative mode instead of the survival mode for my game.
5. deadbabe ◴[20 Nov 24 10:15 UTC] No.42192443[source]▶
Agreed, these kind of games feel lazy imo. Like a dev just wanted to toil endlessly on making a game engine but then never add actual gameplay elements. I played around with Tiny Glade for a little bit and then never really touched it again. Neat, but no depth.
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6. jb_briant ◴[20 Nov 24 11:11 UTC] No.42192771[source]▶
The "lazy" adjective to speak about game dev is provocative because it sounds ignorant. You can't say "lazy" regarding a piece of software which requires that amount of effort, it's just a trolling non sense.
7. famahar ◴[20 Nov 24 11:14 UTC] No.42192795[source]▶
The depth comes from the players own creativity. Not everything needs goals and gameplay loops. Nothing about this is lazy. It's sophisticated piece of software that does exactly what it sought out to do.
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8. jb_briant ◴[20 Nov 24 11:18 UTC] No.42192819{3}[source]▶
And we can argue that using your creativity to tranform thoughts into pixels is a goal in itself
9. delta_p_delta_x ◴[20 Nov 24 12:36 UTC] No.42193388[source]▶
> feel lazy

Game studios which release games with a good 'survival' or 'story mode' have dedicated 'art and story' departments (story- and script-writers, world-builders, art and music directors) who collaborate with the engineering department (engine and gameplay programmers) to produce a cohesive game. The smallest 'indie' games that I've played with a semblance of a story—anything by Amanita Design[1], for instance, or The Long Dark by Hinterland Games[2]—still have teams of about 10-20 people working on different aspects.

Tiny Glade was developed by two people—both extremely talented engineers. But story writers they may not necessarily be. Even though they're 'just engineers' they still managed to produce a beautiful art style backed by serious engineering effort, including real-time non-raytraced GI. There's nothing 'lazy' here. Game developers are frequently just that—developers. They may be creative, but to write an engaging narrative is an entirely different ball-game.

Give them a chance to reap the profits of Tiny Glade, grow their two-person studio, and hopefully hire more staff and put out expansions, sequels, and other titles that have what you wish for.

[1]: https://amanita-design.net/about.html

[2]: https://hinterlandgames.com/