Game Development

Understanding How Much an Indie Game Music Composer Costs

By Ninichi | Contact | Follow

If you’re developing a game, at some point you may be wondering whether or not to invest in a custom game music soundtrack and whether to hire a game music composer to work with or not. One big question that I’m sure is on your mind, is how much will it all cost? How much do indie game music composers charge typically?

Unfortunately this isn’t a simple question to answer since every composer is different. However, as a freelance indie game music composer myself (learn more about me!), I can try to give you an overview of what sort of rates you may come across and to help you understand where some of the pricing structures and costs may come from.

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6 Ways to Manage Burn Out as an Indie Game Developer

It is very easy as a keen indie game developer, to spend more and more time on your game and to overwork yourself into the ground. You have a vision for your game, you have an impossible number of things to do, there’s lots to learn and to try out and to fix and to design, code, get modelled, integrated and so on. The list is endless but your energy is not.  As an indie game music composer (see my stuff!) working alongside many game developers, I've seen this happen many times.

It is so easy for anyone keen to succeed in any industry and/or in any job, or working on any project of significance, to burn out – but we must do all that we can to prevent this.  If you burn out, your energy levels deplete, your enthusiasm and positivity vanishes, your work becomes suboptimal and ultimately even if you finish the project, it won’t be your best work.It is so easy for anyone keen to succeed in any industry and/or in any job, or working on any project of significance, to burn out – but we must do all that we can to prevent this. 

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6 Pitfalls to Avoid as an Indie Game Developer

By Ninichi | Contact | Follow

After having connected with various indie game developers (often supporting them with their game music), I’ve discovered that there are many challenges that one faces in the game development journey.

It can be a tricky road to travel and it’s always good to know what to avoid if you can and so I’ve tried here to highlight some common issues and mistakes that I’ve heard/seen/witnessed people going through. I hope that you will be able to take something away from this and that you find these useful. So here are some key mistakes to note and avoid as you develop your game…After having connected with various indie game developers (often supporting them with their game music), I’ve discovered that there are many challenges that one faces in the game development journey.

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16 Indie-Friendly Indie Game Publishers

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By Ninichi | Contact | Follow

Have you been wondering whether or not to get a publisher for your indie game? It’s not always obvious whether it’s best to seek a publisher or to go it alone, but if you are looking then there certainly are many options open to you. You don’t need to decide now whether or not you want to publish your game yourself or not, but it’s always useful I think, to explore the possibilities.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any direct experience with any of these companies, however, I’ve worked with many indie game developers supporting them with the music to their games (I’m a game music composer, find out more about me if you want to), and I run this blog with the aim of hopefully offering some useful resources, tips and advice that can help the indie developer community along what is often a very challenging journey!

Here's my article on 11 Places to Publish and Release Your Indie Game, for those of you wanting to publish your game yourself. 

Otherwise, here are 16 indie game publishing companies which I think could be useful to be aware of:

1. Curve Digital

Curve Digital was set up in 2013 and now claims to be one of the leading publishers of games on PC and consoles. They offer development funding, internal production, PR and marketing support. In 2017 they were the ‘Publishing Hero’ at the Develop Industry Excellence Awards.

2. Ukuza

Ukuza is a publisher focused on bringing the best indie games to market. They’re a team of creative and marketers who are ex-Microsoft & ex-Amazon and they’re ready to hear all about your game!

3. Team 17

Team 17 publishes games for PC, console, mobile and handheld devices. They have over 25 years of experience in the games industry and so are probably one of the longest running independent publishers out there. They’re headquarters are in West Yorkshire (UK)

4. Devolver Digital

Devolver Digital offers digital distribution and marketing support for indie videogames and films. It’s a fairly well known indie game publisher and so it’s definitely one to take a look at.

5. Indie Fund

Indie Fund is a funding source for indie developers. It’s an alternative to the standard publisher funding model and has been designed to support indie developers to create amazing games and to grow financially independent.

6. Midnight City

Midnight City provides promotional, production and business services and support for independent game developers.

7. Serenity Forge

Serenity Forge is a game development studio with a publishing arm and wealth of other services dedicated to supporting indie developers with their game projects.

8. Noodlecake Studios

Noodlecake Studios is a small indie game studio founded in 2011 and based in Saskatoon, Canada. They make their own games but have also expanded into publishing and help to bring other developers’ games to market. They’re best known for iOS & Android games but are also interested in releasing games across all other platforms too.

9. Versus Evil

Versus Evil is a video game publisher focusing purely on publishing indie games. They publish across all major mobile, PC and next generation consoles and have worked with indie studios around the world. They offer a suite of services to support the indie games they publish, from marketing, PR, influencer outreach, social media, community, QA, localisation and development services to reach other platforms.

10. Mode 7 Games

Mode 7 was founded in 2005 and is an indie game development and publishing company based in Oxford, UK. They’ve been a publisher since 2016 and can offer support across a range of different areas including funding, PR and marketing, production / scheduling, game design, community management, business development, platform holder relationships, tech, porting and more.

11. Humble Bundle Publishing

Humble Bundle has a publishing arm, which can help you with indie game. You can connect with their 12 million customers, own your IP, get help with marketing and PR, leverage the Humble Bundle brand, get help with financing and more.

12. Surprise Attack

Surprise Attack Games is an independent games label focusing on games that bring something new or different to the table. They’re based in Australia and were created in 2013. They offer a full publishing team providing expertise and resources to the games they develop. They don’t own any share of the IP and state that the game developer always has the final say.

13. Headup Games

Headup Games has released over 100 titles since being established in 2009. They’re a hybrid games publishing and development company, always on the look out for new games to get involved with.

14. tinyBuild Games

tinyBuild helps indie developers to publish their games across a multitude of platforms, releasing games onto Steam, Xbox One, PS4, 3DS, VR, iOS and Google Play. They’ve been doing this since 2013 and offer support with funding, knowledge, production, artwork, guidance and more.

15. Steak Steak

Steak Steak is a full service indie game publishing company offering support at all stages of your game development. Whether you need help with trailers, PR, branding, development or anything else, they can help.

16. Whippering

Whippering offers marketing support and partnering relationship opportunities to indie game developers. They publish independent games and can help with the creation and execution of your marketing strategy from positioning, pitching, PR, social media and more. They can also initiate and manage platform relationships with the likes of Sony, Oculus, Valve, Nintendo, MSFT.

I hope this resource list has been useful to you. Do browse my blog for other interesting articles that may help you with various aspects of your game development. Feel free to use the search bar (on the blog homepage and on the bottom of every page) to help explore specific subject areas. A few articles that may be useful to be aware of include:


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About the author: Ninichi is a freelance game music composer and film music composer. She creates music for indie gamesfilms, podcasts, tv shows, commercials and more. 

She is an incredibly diverse composer with an extensive credit list to her name. If you'd like help with music for any project, feel free to contact her now.

Follow her @ninichimusic

17 Great Places to Find Free Game Art

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By Ninichi | Contact | Follow

Having the right graphics in a game is incredibly important yet it’s not always possible to get custom artwork created for all aspects of your game. Sometimes budget constraints or time can make it difficult yet where can you go to find the right tilesets, textures, sprites etc. for your game?

Well if I’m honest, I wouldn’t know where the best place is! I’m just a composer (see my homepage) and so my specialty is music, however, I do work with many indie game developers (see my credits) and on other various projects that require great artwork. I often get asked if I know where one would go for these types of assets. So, to hopefully help you move in the right direction, I’ve compiled a list of resources that I think are definitely worth knowing about.

Some I’ve browsed myself, others have been recommended and I know are used by other game developers, so see what you make of them…

1. Open Game Art

This is one of the most popular sites for free 2D and 3D art and graphics for game developers. Everything is categorised and there’s also an active forum on the site which is often worth browsing too.

I’ve mentioned this site before in another blog as it also has free sound effects (see 12 Great Places to Find SFX for your Game).

2. Game Art Guppy

Their slogan is ‘helping indie game devs make a splash’ and indeed they do!  The site was created by Vicki Wenderlich to give game developers on a tight budget the opportunity find free and inexpensive art for their games. There are loads of free art assets on the site and those that you have to pay for are mostly between $5-20, so are very affordable.

3. Open Game Graphics

Most of the assets available to download from Open Game Graphics are under Creative Commons Attribution or Creative Commons Zero licenses. So, most are free to use and can be used in commercial projects, but some may require a credit. The ‘Collections’ are great as they contain pretty much everything you need for a full game.

4. Itch.io

There are many free game assets available on Itch, as well as being a great platform for finding, playing and publishing indie games. Use the search filter options to narrow down your search and to find what you need.

(Also see 11 Places to Publish Your Game)

5. GameDev Market

Similarly to Itch.io, this is a digital marketplace where people can put up various assets for a fixed price but many people do make assets available for free as well.  The search options let you filter by ‘paid’ or ‘free’ options and so play around with that to see what’s available, however, the paid assets are very much affordable and so it’s a great site to browse through generally.

6. SpriteLand

If you’re making a mobile game, this site is a great resource for you. It’s full royalty free graphics/sprites you can use for your games or apps, and there are also a range of tutorial videos, games to play and a SpriteMaker you can play around with too.

7. Game Art 2D

This site has a ‘freebies’ section, which includes some free sprites, tilesets, GUIs and more. There aren’t a huge number available but they are complete sets which include scrolling backgrounds, objects, decorations, multiple file formats etc and so it’s worth a look. The paid art bundles are fairly reasonably priced as well so good to browse.

8. Graphic Buffet

Similarly to Game Art 2D, you can buy cheap 2D art assets here or explore their freebie section.  This online graphic store was set up by designer and developer Debug Design (Aka Ian Garstang). There’s a blog and they also take requests, and so if you want something that you can’t find there, you could ask for it!

9. Craft Pix

Craftpix offers both free and premium 2D assets for games. You’ll find most of the main categories available: icons, sprites, tilesets, GUI, characters, backgrounds, game kits etc. All can be used in commercial projects and integrated easily into most game engines i.e. Unity / Unreal Engine and many others. Most assets are either free or below $10.

10. Unlucky Studio

This site is run by Sujit Kumar Yadav, the author of Game Maker for Beginners. It’s basically a blog with various informative tutorials and game art assets all available to download for free. You can offer a donation via the site but otherwise everything is presented in the form of giveaways.

11. Game Art Partners

You can download a free game art assets bundle via their site. If you sign up to their newsletter you get a discount off the paid bundles and a range of other goodies. It’s one to take a look at and be aware of for sure!

12. Glitch The Game

Glitch was a collaborative, web-based massively multiplayer game which was opened to the public in 2010 but then shut down in 2012. The whole library of art assets from the game are now freely available in the public domain and so this site is definitely worth checking out. There are over 10,000 assets available including location art, spritesheets etc etc. and they’re all really high quality.

13. Dumbmanax

This site was created by Brent Anderson, a freelance game designer and developer. He’s made a lot of artwork available to use for free and it’s easy to download as zip files. The only catch is that you need to include a credit somewhere in your game. 

14. Crateboy

Here you’ll find a collection of over 300 files all available under creative commons.  It’s basically one 28MB zip file with lots in there to play with. The 8 bit city resource files are the ones to note and you just need to credit Crateboy in your game or ‘pay what you like’.

15. WidgetWorx SpriteLib

SpriteLib is a collection of static and animated graphic objects (sprites) available for hobbyist game developers to download in one big file. If you need sprites, this could be worth a look. It’s not a biggest pack ever but there are some great landscapes and characters in there, which are easy to download and use in any 2D game.  These are available under Common Public License.

16. Kenney Game Assets

There are over 40,000 free images, audio files and 3D models all available to use for free on this site.  They’re all in the public domain and are easy to download. There’s also a paid section where you can get bundles and premium assets which is also worth a little look. 

17. Reiners Tilesets

This site was created by a hobby game developer when they couldn’t find any graphics and decided to create their own! The site now contains lots of tilesets, sprites, textured low poly meshes, sound effects, tutorials and more. Whether you’re creating a 2D or 3D game, there might be something here for you.

So there you have it! 17 amazing resources for your game. Unfortunately this is all I can really help you with from the art side of your project, but if you happen to need help with any music, I can certainly do much more! Drop me a line if you’d like to explore this further. I’m on Twitter if you want to DM me there or just pop me a message and I’ll be in touch very soon!


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About the author: Ninichi is a freelance game music composer and film music composer. She creates music for indie games, films, podcasts, tv shows, commercials and more. 

She is an incredibly diverse composer with an extensive credit list to her name. If you'd like help with music for any project, feel free to contact her now.

Follow her @ninichimusic

Introducing the Game: Cat Quest

Interview By Ninichi | Contact | Follow

This week, I'm happy to be exploring Cat Quest, which is the latest game created by the award winning games studio responsible for bringing the popular game Slashy Hero to Android & iOS! Let's see what they have to tell us about the game.

Tell me about your team and your game... 

'The team behind Cat Quest is none other than The Gentlebros. We're a team made up of veterans of the games industry. Having worked on console (PS3, PS4) titles in Koei Tecmo, we're all very experienced developers and we're looking to bring that knowledge to our own games.

Cat Quest is a 2d Open World RPG set in the fantastic and wonderful world of cats! Play as a catventurer as you explore a massive continent crafted in the unique style of tapestry! Relive the good old days of exploring an overworld map as you raid dungeons for epic loot, complete quests and meet the many furry denizens of this world!'

How long have you been working on your game for? How have you gone about developing it?

'We've been working on Cat Quest close to a year(including pre-production). We decided to use the Unity engine to make it as it is the most user friendly engine out in the market now, and there's a huge community working on the engine as well.'

What's different about it & why should we check it out?

'A streamlined open world action RPG set in the unique world of cats! Imagine a world where cats are the main inhabitants. How would things change?

Go to places like the Catpital where the Lion King rules, or experience delicacies like the catnip pie! Talk to the locals, some already on their 7th or 8th lives (what? not all cats have nine lives y'know), and go on a catventure through a world you've never seen before!'

What part does music play in your game?

'Music is an important part as it sets the mood and tone of the areas in the game. Its bright and cheerful when exploring the overworld, and dark and creepy when deep inside dungeons.

Music helps to separate these different areas from each other, and heighten the feeling we want players to have. Indeed, without music, the game would feel dead and flat.'


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About the author: Ninichi is a game music composer and film music composer. She has worked on a number of games and is a great supporter of indie developers and indie games. If you're looking for music that will help your game to stand out contact her now to discuss your game music needs.

Follow her @ninichimusic