I’m starting an indie game studio

I’m starting an indie game studio, and it’s called Mikey of Legend.

For almost twenty years I worked in community management. Startups first, then game studios like CI Games and Saber Interactive. That’s games like Lords of the Fallen, Evil Dead: The Game, World War Z Aftermath, and a ton more. My job was to sit between the people making a game and the people playing it, and make sure both sides came away feeling heard.

It turned out to be the best design education I could have asked for, and I didn’t really understand that until recently. When you spend two decades reading what players say an hour after a patch goes live, you stop guessing about what’s fun. You start noticing which moments people quote back to each other, which ones they’ll forgive, and which ones quietly lose them without anybody ever filing a complaint.

I should also mention I had never really written a line of code before this year. I’m learning Unreal Engine the hard way, which is the only way I’ve ever learned anything. It’s going about how you’d expect. Slowly, badly, and with a lot of enthusiasm. 😂

My first video game

Students Against Spooky Stuff (SASS) is about four kids who run a paranormal investigation club out of Storage Closet B-7 at Tombstone High. Someone reports something strange, you go look, and then you have to decide what you’re actually dealing with. Fake, real, or both.

Both is where it gets interesting. Most hauntings have a person behind them somewhere, and most hoaxes are covering for something nobody wants to say out loud. That’s what I’m going for with all of it, really. Stories that haunt you a little and hug you a lot. Something sometimes scary or wholesome.

I’m building a prototype in Unreal Engine and aiming for a playable demo in early 2027.

The main characters

Left to right. Cassie, Jay, Marcis, and Lena. Just missing Lena’s cat Lunaria. Still modeling it.

Cassie Ferraro runs the club and keeps the files. She’s the kind of person who will keep investigating something long after everyone else has decided it’s probably fine.

Jay Ortega has the strangest connection to any of this. He doesn’t always understand what’s happening to him, but he’s remarkably good at accepting the impossible and skipping straight to “okay, what do we do about it?”

Marcus Chen builds the equipment. If there’s a strange reading or a piece of gear that needs figuring out, Marcus is already taking notes. Lots of notes.

Lena Park is calm and intuitive and has a rather unusual relationship with the supernatural. She sees things from an angle the rest of the group hasn’t considered yet. Her cat is involved. That’s all I’ll say for now.

They care about each other enough to walk into places they absolutely should not be walking into. That’s the whole game, really.

If you want to help playtest the game, you can join the waitlist here!

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Lastly, I’m working on a manga about this whole journey, though right now that mostly means learning how to draw. I’ve always loved manga and the way it tells a story, and it felt like a fun way to actually experience how a game gets made instead of just reading about it. Chapters will come out after the events actually happen in real life, not written after I already know how the story ends. More on that once there’s something worth sharing.

So, if you’re into spooky indie games, manga or someone thinking about taking the leap into indie game development then you’re in the right place.

More spooky stuff soon. 👻

• Mikey