Introduction

Exit Door Games was started with the motivation of making games that people could play together online. For now, there’s only one person behind the curtain. When the pandemic started, I wanted to play escape rooms online with my friends, but surprisingly there were very few available. I am hoping to document my journey and encourage others to also pursue game dev so we can all have more games to play together.

Unlikely Success

I thought about making games a few times in the 2010s, but I was always discouraged by reports that made it seem unlikely I would succeed. Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd attempt. Stardew Valley took 4 years of crunch. Grim Fandango killed Adventure Games. The Last Express was a commercial failure.

What changed my mind was an app called Rando. I was working on a photo-sharing app called Fleck in 2014, and there was another company that made Rando. I saw it as being the closest in terms of vision for Fleck, and I developed a lot of respect for the other company because they had good design. Then they suddenly shut down the app in March, and by June they were winning a design award from Apple for Monument Valley. For me that was a turning point that made me think I might also have the skills to make a successful game, from years of experience working on consumer apps.

I spent the next few years reading articles, watching GDC videos and reading The Art of Game Design. Keep reading to find out more!