Emily Sondering
speaker
543 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 18 Sep
Emily Sondering’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And like, we, I was like, okay, let's just, you know, she tried to fix it. We couldn't fix it. And I was like, okay, let's just go to dinner. But at dinner the entire time I was thinking about this bug. Oh my God, why can't it get fixed? And I know like the bug was not the biggest deal in the world. And obviously I will get to it eventually, but it was just this nagging thing.
sense in me why does that error exist in the game when it didn't before who put that in there it was probably me because i'm the one working on the project um i i don't handle my stress well that's a good answer no i mean that's a good answer
and my wife will tell me a whole story and then I'm just like yeah wait what what and I have no clue what anybody said the whole time because I'm running through everything in my brain same but I will I will say sometimes like I remember there's been a few times where I've had a bug and then I was like okay I need to not be a disgusting human I take a shower and then in the shower I think about the solution and when I come back the solution comes shower thoughts are some of the most productive thoughts out there that you're really a moment when you fix it in your head and then you're like
I will say like, okay, I don't think this is a good thing, but I do think that my anxiety and obsessiveness is probably what makes the game good. Because I think to be a solo dev, you have to be very self-motivated.
So you need to be that type of person to think about the bug during dinner, because it's that important that you fix it rather than take things casually. Yeah. So I think it's good for the game, bad for my mental.
Yeah, I have a lot of advice on this. My first advice is to just start. And what I mean by that is I get so many people asking me questions like, what is the perfect game engine for me? Should I make 3D or 2D? And it's like, don't think about these questions.
Just pick one game engine, maybe read one article, watch one YouTube video about it, pick one, and then Google roll a ball tutorial game engine, and then just do that. And that's how you start. When I started making games, I never contemplated what game engine I should do because the people around me were just using Unity. So I thought, okay, I'm going to use Unity. No thought about it.
I didn't even contemplate what else I should do. When I decided I wanted to learn how to program, I didn't look into what is the best expensive course. I didn't look into getting back into college. I just was like, okay, YouTube University, I'm going to Google basic Unity tutorial and then I'm going to watch that and that's how I'm going to make my game.
So I feel like more of the doing, less of the thinking, honestly, is a big advice. The second big advice I would say is to make a lot of bad things and be proud of the fact that you made a lot of bad things. I hear a lot of developers want to make the next Stardew Valley as their first game. And like, yes, I guess, you know, Concerned Ape did do that.
But I'm not Concerned Ape and... You know, you're the point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, one percent to be concerned. It was also in a very unique position because he didn't really make money during the production of Stardew Valley. He worked either not at all or part time at a movie theater and get a girlfriend who subsidized his life. So, like, unless you are in that extremely.
I'm having everything paid for. And all you could do is work on your game full time. That's probably not going to be you. But that's okay. I think when I was making games, I was doing a ton of game jams. Game jams are where you make a game from scratch in a short period of time. And... Yeah, they were bad.
And I honestly didn't care, actually, like because I would make them in a weekend and it was bad. I'd go, OK, on to the next one, on to the next one. And then eventually they got better because eventually I made A Taste of the Past, which actually started as a three day project. Actually, in fact, the vast majority of A Taste of the Past was made in three days.
All I did was polish it up a little bit, add a new scene, fix a couple of bugs. And then that's what led to the Steam release, which led to so many other opportunities in game dev. So, yeah, be proud of making bad things.
Yeah, so in terms of like maybe my next marketing beat, I don't know when it's going to happen, but I do have a demo that will be released publicly eventually. Actually, today is a very exciting day. So I'm hosting my first in-person Lily's World XD meetup where I'm giving a talk and then select participants will be actually to will be.
Sorry, I'm giving a talk at UCLA and afterwards select participants will be able to play the demo early. which is crazy because right now I've only showed the demo to my close friends. So this will be the first time where people I've never met in my life will be playing the game and giving their honest feedback, scared, but excited. Um, and yeah, Eventually, the game will come out.
I'm hoping for some time in 2026, but I don't want to say a date because if I don't say a date, I can't be late.
Yeah, well, I would say now financial success matters to me because I do this full time. Of course, I want to have the money to continue making games. But when I started making games, I would say that I measured the success in learning. So actually, in a lot of the early games I did, I would try different things. So in one game, I was just the artist. Another game, I actually did music.
I did music one time for a game and one game I did just the UI design. And so I was learning about all these different disciplines. which I actually do think now has helped me so much as a solo developer, as someone who now does every discipline. But I would definitely say, like, I'm the type of person where user feedback is super important to me.
I think there are certain developers who think, like, I'm right because I'm the one making the game and I have the expertise. But I'm one where, like, the player is right. So if I think a puzzle is amazing and creative, but all the playtesters don't get it, it's confusing. It's not creative and amazing. It's bad.
I remember when I made the Game Jam version of A Taste of the Past, one comment that I got was talking about how uh, this guy was playing all the games from other game jams. And he was like, I was, I went from playing a game about dogs to playing a game about dead mothers. And I'm crying like WTF is going on. And that is still one of my favorite comments to this day. I haven't screenshotted.
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