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Developer proudly shows his game on the Steam homepage: “3 years ago I didn’t even know how to program”
3 years ago the Dane Lasse Zacho Malver had no idea about programming, now he celebrated his game on the Steam homepage. On Reddit he shared how he did it.
What kind of game is this? In October 2022, Lasse Zacho Malver released his auto battler Mage and Monsters. In it you play a magician and at the same time command an army to flatten tons of monsters.
With 91% thumbs up from a total of 567 reviews, Mage and Monsters is rated “very positive”. It’s currently 25% off and available on Steam for €2.96 until May 2nd. If you opened up Steam yesterday, you might have even seen the game with the minotaur in the cover photo, as it appeared under the special offers on the home page.
Behind the game is a single developer, Dane Lasse Zacho Malver. On Reddit, he shared how he made it from being a novice programmer to the Steam homepage.
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From Philosophy to Unity
How did the story become known? On the gaming subreddit, Malver proudly shared a photo of himself and his game on the homepage. He revealed that 3 years ago he didn’t even know how to program.
The post garnered 107,000 upvotes and received numerous comments from users congratulating the developer, praising the game and asking how he did it. We have included the post for you here:
How did the developer manage that? In the comments, Malver explained that he had no technical or at least mathematical background. Rather, he studied English and philosophy. He took his first steps in programming by following this Unity tutorial on YouTube.
The developer says he just felt he had to try it, otherwise he would have regretted it forever. He won the starting capital playing online poker. He was always aware that he could fail, but he had no problem with that.
His advice to others pursuing similar projects is to just work on it a little bit every day. You never know what you’re capable of if you don’t just try.
I’ve been doing my best to get a little bit closer to completion every day. I knew I would be disappointed in myself if I gave up on the project. And if I’m ever going to make a career out of it, I need to be able to finish projects.
But he also warns that the road to financial independence as an indie developer is rocky and long.
Malve already released the Free2Play title Calturin and Clone in 2020, followed by Calturin in 2021. When Calturin wasn’t selling well, he used the skills he had acquired to work for others in game development.
For smaller developers in particular, the fact that Steam grabs 30% of every purchase makes it even more difficult. Many devs and players are annoyed about this. However, YouTuber Bellular, who recently released his own game on Steam, explained why he has no problem with it.
The ‘greedy’ Steam takes 30% of every purchase – Indie dev says, ‘We’re very happy with that!’
