Hunt and Fight developer – about mastering game dev from YouTube lessons, gaining experience and leaving occupied territories

Hello everyone! We are the Ukrainian publishing company Two Cakes Studio. We cooperate with Ukrainian indie game developers and help release and distribute projects on most game platforms.

Our company was born in the not-so-distant year of 2019. I, Vitalii Revchuk, and Valerii Shcherba became its co-founders. Each of us has almost 10 years of game development experience, we have worked side by side for many years and not in the same company.

Our main experience is porting to various platforms, and supporting publishers and developers in the release of their games.

We started with outsourcing and, having gained experience, we came to the fact that we have everything necessary to open the direction of game publishing. And so it happened.

From 2023, we officially cooperate with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo as a publishing company. In outsourcing, we mostly work with European and American companies, but in publishing, we determined that a Ukrainian developer is a priority for us.

We consider all projects, paying more attention to those that have market potential, even those that are risky and unfinished, and we give recommendations for market entry and further development to others. We really want not just to do business, but to contribute our share to the development and support of game development in Ukraine.

And this blog will talk about one talented developer and his game.

“Spent a month and a half under Russian occupation.” The story of an indie developer from the city of Oleshka

At the beginning of this year, we met and started cooperation with the Ukrainian developer Yevhen Bielik (Start Impulse), who has already finished his first game – Action RPG Hunt and Fight , and is currently working on the second project.

Yevhen Bielik

We were impressed by Yevhen’s talent and decided to tell his story. Before the full-scale invasion, the developer lived in the city of Oleshki, in the Kherson region, which is now under Russian occupation. Evgeny himself was eventually able to leave the occupation to controlled territory.

His journey to making an ARPG on his own is a true source of inspiration. We recorded a short interview with Yevhen so that he could talk about how Hunt and Fight was created, why it was necessary to restore part of the project, and about the experience he gained during development.

— Yevhen, tell us a little about yourself, how did you become an indie developer?

I graduated from Kherson State University, specialty — artistic culture, fine arts. He worked as a designer all his life: video editing, various types of design, even at the factory as a designer. In between jobs, I did 3D modeling and sold models online.

Buyers who used my models for their games often asked questions that indicated their lack of competence in the game development industry. This surprised me, because I thought that you need to understand more about games in order to develop them. Therefore, when there were more such questions, I thought that I could try to create my own game.

— What inspired you to start developing the game?

Most motivation comes from games. While playing, I gained experience and constantly evaluated the gameplay. I looked at the games and thought that it could be done better. That’s how the motivation came. It was a smooth transition from player to developer.

— How did you start the development of the Hunt and Fight game?

First, I analyzed the quantity and quality of game creation tutorials on YouTube and forums, as this was my only source of information (GPT chat didn’t exist back then). After concluding that this was enough for the first game, I started to create a map and then a character. There were many attempts. As I gained experience, I constantly reduced the ambition of the project. The questions “what’s next?”, “will I be able to do it all?” there was so much that I decided to just not think about it and move step by step, and then it will be as it will be.

In the beginning, everything went quite cheerfully, the fact that I did not know how to program before this did not hold me back much. The main challenge was waiting for me when I tackled the mechanics of saving and loading the game. I expected that in the engine you could call a command that would simply save the current state of the scene and then when necessary, load it, but everything turned out to be much more complicated and my chaotic style of game development “on the fly” showed itself in this not from the best side. Nevertheless, I did not meet with something irrefutable in the development of the game.

— How much did the development of Hunt and Fight take in total?

The development took about one and a half to two years. The main time was occupied by the creative part (quests, lore, choice of style, etc.), and this despite the fact that it was still necessary to learn how to implement all this technically.

When the full-scale Russian invasion began, I saved the project to an external hard drive. As it turned out, I only saved about 70% of the files, so I had to restore the rest from scratch.

It was the only copy of the game project. He spent a month and a half under Russian occupation, then managed to leave for controlled territory. I was helped by people whom I did not know before, who provided free housing in the Zhytomyr region. After some time, I was able to buy a laptop and began to remember what I was doing, because by that time 2 months had already passed.

— Why did you choose such a minimalist style for the game?

I love RPGs and strategies. I chose the style of the game by watching the developers on YouTube. Many make cool locations, but then face the need to develop characters and animations that match the level of those locations. And it is too difficult for one developer.

Hunt and Fight game screenshot

Hunt and Fight game screenshot

Some developers solved this problem by loading ready-made assets, but this resulted in their games not looking cohesive. Finding assets that perfectly match the style of the game is very difficult, so differences in style, level of detail and quality become noticeable and destroy the harmony of the visual series. I realized that if I want to do everything myself, then I need to choose a minimalist style.

— What are you working on now and do you see your career specifically in game development?

Everything depends on the financial results. Now I’m finishing the second game – strategic Turn-base RPG Fight Life:Vanguard. At this stage, I want to understand whether it can become my main job, or whether it will remain just a hobby. I want to make the next game a strategy in real time. There is an old game from 1998 that inspires me a lot.

Thank you for your attention. By the way, Yevhen’s game Hunt and Fight is now available on Steam in the form of a demo version, so everyone can try it for free and add it to their favorites.