No Time, No Budget: How I Finished My Indie Game 'The First Tree'

A personal journey of creating a successful indie game while working full-time and raising a family, with insights on development and marketing strategies that worked.

The Personal Project That Became a Success

My name is David Wehby, and I created a third-person exploration game called The First Tree. The game follows a fox searching for her lost cubs, intertwined with a parallel narrative of a son reconnecting with his father in Alaska. This project was deeply personal, born from my own experience of losing my father to a heart attack in 2010. I wanted to channel those emotions into a game and share that story.

What started as a hobbyist project achieved more than I imagined. It was showcased at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and PAX West. The most remarkable part is that I finished the game while working full-time as a Technical Artist at a VR company, raising two kids, and supporting my partner's art career.

By the Numbers: Scope and Success

The game was developed over 18 months, amounting to roughly 1,000 hours of nights and weekends. The total cost was $10,000, which covered everything from development and music to website hosting and convention fees.

The successful Steam launch provided the funds and proof of concept needed to partner with porting specialists (Do Games) for the console releases on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.

Finding Time: The 1% Day Strategy

Balancing a full-time job, family, and game development required a strict schedule and sacrifice. My wife and I hired neighborhood teens to watch our kids for a few hours a week, allowing me to dedicate about 10 hours to development. I missed out on movies, other games, and leisure time.

The key was avoiding "zero percent days." Even on exhausted days, I aimed for a "1% day"—completing a small, manageable task like answering an email or tweaking a color. These small wins built momentum to tackle more complex challenges. This consistent, incremental progress was crucial to finishing the game.

Development: Embracing Licensed Assets

I am a strong advocate for using licensed, publicly available assets as a springboard for development. As an artist, I could have created many assets myself, but using licensed ones saved me an estimated 600 hours of work.

I licensed environment packs, animations, and music. For example, the beautiful soundtrack by composer Josh Kramer cost only $30-$50 per song. The strategy wasn't to create an "asset flip" but to use these resources as a foundation, then modify and personalize them heavily to create a unique and consistent art style.

Marketing: The 18-Month Reddit Strategy

Marketing ran concurrently with development. My strategy focused on "low-time, high-impact" efforts, primarily centered on creating and sharing GIFs.

Each week, I spent about 3 hours creating GIFs and posting them on key platforms:

• Twitter: Using hashtags like #screenshotsaturday and #madewithunity.
• Tumblr: With relevant tags to reach a broader audience.
• Reddit: Participating in subreddits like r/gaming, r/indiegaming, and r/Unity3D.

This wasn't an instant success. Over 18 months, I posted 41 times on Imgur alone. Some posts failed, but a few gained significant traction, slowly building my wishlists and email list.

Finding the Hook and Launching

The game's "hook" was accidental but powerful: it combined two things players love—games like Journey and animals, specifically foxes. This made it easily marketable and relatable.

I prioritized creating a visually appealing trailer and Steam page very early. GIFs consistently outperformed screenshots by 10x in terms of shares, providing valuable data on which scenes resonated most with audiences. This data was then used to craft a more effective trailer.

The goal was to gather enough wishlists to trigger Steam's algorithm upon launch, aiming for the coveted "New & Trending" tab. A successful launch day "social media blitz" was planned to maximize visibility.

This plan culminated in a launch-day post on r/gaming that garnered 3 million views, drove 200,000 Steam page visits, and finally secured a spot on the "New & Trending" tab, which was responsible for the majority of initial sales.

Lessons Learned and The Reward

The success of The First Tree on Steam allowed me to fund console ports, which in turn performed successfully. This chain of events led to me becoming a full-time indie developer.

The greatest reward wasn't financial. It was the hundreds of emails from players who found profound personal meaning in the game. One player wrote that the game gave them a chance to speak to their deceased mother again, if only for a brief moment. This is the ultimate reason to finish your game—because someone out there needs to play it.