Entry 66 - The Story of Force of Nature

Today, I found myself once again pondering a familiar question: why did I decide to create a game in an entirely new genre? Why not just make Force of Nature 3? After all, I had already achieved some success in that genre and built a small but engaged community.

 

Anyone who played both parts of Force of Nature likely noticed how different they are from a technical standpoint. I developed the first game with virtually no experience in game development, which meant I made every possible mistake along the way. In fact, when I started working on it, I had no intention of ever selling it.

 

Medical Visualization

At one of my previous jobs, I worked in computer graphics – specifically, volume visualization for medical equipment. Devices like CT, MRI, and ultrasound scanners can capture data from beneath the skin. This data is stored in volumetric cubes, where each voxel encodes a specific material property – such as X-ray density or magnetic susceptibility. Naturally, this creates a need to visualize the data in a clear and useful way: to explore the inside of the human body, isolate what the doctor needs to see, remove unnecessary details, and take measurements.

 

Standard 3D rendering techniques are great for visualizing surfaces – but these machines don’t give us surfaces, only density values. Of course, there are algorithms that can reconstruct surfaces from volumetric data, and we worked on those too. However, they’re not entirely reliable and often fail to provide accurate or consistent surface definitions. In medical devices, such uncertainty is unacceptable, which is why voxel-based rendering – without explicit surface reconstruction – is typically preferred. The resulting visualization doesn’t have sharply defined boundaries but instead faithfully presents the raw data as captured by the scanner.

 

 

I found this work fascinating. Programming for GPUs is very different from programming for CPUs. The GPU’s architecture is unique, with a limited and specialized set of capabilities, meaning that common programming patterns often don’t apply. Even traditional polygon rasterization techniques were of little use here – volume rendering relies on ray tracing methods, and at the time, GPUs didn’t yet have dedicated instructions for that. Each new task felt like a puzzle, and solving it brought genuine satisfaction. Over time, I became deeply knowledgeable in this area. I began developing my own techniques and even managed to implement some features that our competitors didn’t have.

 

A Hobby Project

One day, while playing Terraria, I suddenly realized that I had all the skills necessary to make a similar game – perhaps even in 3D. The idea excited me, and I decided to try building my own polygon-based renderer. Just a day later, I already had a basic prototype: I could fly over a simple landscape made up of different types of soil. Within a week, the world had water, grass, and trees. It was incredibly exciting to keep adding more and more elements to this world. I named the project The Island.

 

 

At the time, accessible and free game engines like we have today simply didn’t exist. Both Unreal Engine and Unity required paid licenses. But I wasn’t aiming to make a full-fledged game anyway – I had no idea how I would even distribute it. Steam didn’t have its Greenlight program yet and mostly featured big-budget titles. I just wanted to challenge myself – to build something from scratch, entirely with my own hands. It was a hobby project, and progress was slow, since I was working two jobs and writing my PhD thesis at the same time.

 

Greenlight

In July 2012, Steam launched Greenlight – a system that allowed developers to get their games onto the platform through community voting. I didn’t hear about it right away, but when I did, I immediately set a new goal: to turn my hobby project into something complete. By then, I already had procedural world generation with a variety of biomes, but there was still a long road ahead – skeletal animation, AI, UI, sound design, construction mechanics, special effects, and countless other small systems. Since I wasn’t using any game engine, I had to build every single part myself. There were plenty of complex challenges, but overcoming them was always rewarding.

 

My two jobs were taking up a huge amount of time and energy. Eventually, I realized I might never finish the game unless I made a bold move – so I left my well-paid job at a large American medical company. My coworkers were surprised; landing that position hadn’t been easy. And it’s not like I was leaving for a better opportunity elsewhere – I was leaving for a self-made hobby project, cobbled together on my own.

 

But the decision was made, and after that, development kicked into high gear. In the end, the game was ready and submitted to the Greenlight community. Two weeks later, it was approved – those were some of the most nerve-wracking weeks of my life.

 

 

Three more months of intense work later, the game was officially released on Steam.

 

Force of Nature

I’m not sure how successful my project would be considered. There are solo-developed games that have achieved far greater popularity. Since I built my own engine, the graphics were already a bit outdated by the time the game was released. Still, for me personally, the sales were a clear success. I realized that I could now make a decent living from my hobby – working with joy instead of pressure. And without a boss hovering above me. That was an amazing feeling.

 

But it also came with responsibility – now I had to make every decision myself, and there were no guarantees of stable income. So I got straight back to work, adding new items, buildings, and implementing a co-op mode.

 

However, I started running into a major issue – any new feature I wanted to implement had to be developed entirely by me. Around that time, free engines like Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 were becoming mainstream, giving indie developers access to modern tools and effects and allowing them to work much faster. If I continued with my custom engine, I’d quickly fall behind. So it became clear: I had to switch to one of the modern engines. Porting Force of Nature to a new engine would have meant rewriting everything from scratch. So instead, I decided it was more efficient to begin work on a full sequel.

 

Force of Nature 2

After spending some time evaluating both Unreal and Unity, I decided to go with Unity. (I’ve written more about my engine choice here and here.) I had to learn how to use Unity’s assets, shaders, animation system, and UI tools – but before long, development was in full swing. Now I didn’t have to spend most of my time on technical challenges. I could focus on the game itself – on better controls, a clearer interface, helpful hints, and an actual storyline. I could implement smarter enemy behavior and a deeper combat system. All of this received far more attention in the sequel than in the original.

 

Thanks to the steady income from the first game’s sales, I was also able to hire a few helpers – artists, 3D modelers, animators, and a sound designer. In the first game, I had to constantly decide whether to spend time creating a new monster myself or use a ready-made (often flawed) asset from an online store – and I usually chose the latter. But now, I could create exactly what I wanted for each specific biome. Whereas before I had to piece the game together from whatever I had lying around, now I could build it the way I had always envisioned.

 

In the end, I feel that Force of Nature 2 is far more polished than the original. To me, it’s a game that genuinely looks at home on the Steam store, without the amateur feel of the first one.

Some players might disagree – I’ve seen reviews saying I should’ve continued developing the original game instead. But judging by the ratings, the sequel resonated more with players: 80% positive reviews compared to 75% for the first.

 

And yet, here’s what really surprised me: Force of Nature 2 had deeper mechanics, more content, higher quality, better reviews… and still made less money at launch than the original.

The reason? In 2016, when the first game came out, about 11 games were released on Steam each day. By 2021, that number had risen to 33. Competition had tripled – and if you narrow it down to open-world survival games, it had grown more than fourfold. Sure, many of those games are low quality, but there are plenty of solid ones too. Which means today, a fan of survival games has to choose between mine and three other titles of similar quality.

 

Crytivo

After Steam ended the Greenlight system, the indie game market began to grow rapidly. That meant I now had to think about how to make my game stand out among the flood of new titles. I considered two options: marketing companies, which simply take your money and build a promotional strategy; and publishers, who also promote the game but consistently take a cut of your revenue. I didn’t know much about marketing, so the choice was tough. But in the end, I decided that a publisher would be more motivated to promote the game effectively, since their income would grow along with mine.

 

Still, picking a publisher requires caution – it's easy to end up with one that does absolutely nothing yet still takes half your revenue. And that’s not just a problem with small companies that don’t know what they’re doing. Even large firms can be guilty of this.

 

It’s pretty hard to find honest, up-to-date information about game publishers, but I came across quite a few positive reviews about one company and decided to reach out. They were interested in my game too, and that’s how I ended up signing a contract with Crytivo.

 

As it turned out, working with a publisher wasn’t scary at all. I didn’t lose an ounce of creative independence – I was still free to decide what to work on and which direction to take. Yes, they did suggest a few things right away. But all their suggestions were just that – recommendations. They were also well-reasoned and very convincing, so I agreed to all the changes immediately.

 

In addition to promotion, Crytivo also handled registration of the game on several platforms besides Steam. Of course, those platforms don’t bring in nearly as much revenue as Steam, but I did the math, and combined, their sales just about cover the portion of income I share with the publisher.

Plus, sales on Steam noticeably increased too, so overall, I definitely came out ahead.

 

Beyond the marketing, I also gained access to a network of experienced people – folks who had faced many situations, worked with various teams, and were always ready to answer my questions and offer advice. It became much easier for me to make tough decisions about the game’s development. I can’t say all publishers operate this way, but my experience was definitely a positive one.

 

Future Plans

And so I came to the most important question: what should I do next?

 

The obvious idea was to start working on Force of Nature 3. But something was bothering me.

Even though partnering with a publisher had boosted the sales of the second game, the total revenue only just caught up to what the first game had earned. That trend really worried me. I realized that with modern game engines becoming more accessible, the barrier to entry in game development had dropped significantly. That means more and more great games are going to be released by small indie studios.

 

I think I managed to make a pretty big quality leap from FoN1 to FoN2, but that was just enough to maintain my position in the market. If I want to stay in game development, I’ll need to make another leap between FoN2 and FoN3 – reaching an entirely new level of quality. But my financial situation hasn’t changed, and I could only afford to spend as much on FoN3 as I did on FoN2. So it was unlikely I’d be able to make that leap on the same budget.

 

I needed a way to quickly, and preferably with minimal investment, create a game that could generate significant income. Sounds like a perfect plan, right? But you know how it is – "easy money" always comes with high risk. And I decided to take that risk.

 

Luckily, the architecture of Force of Nature 2 turned out to be flexible and easy to adapt to different genres, so I could modify it for a new kind of gameplay. I thought a networked team-based battle game could be a great direction. From the start, I also knew I wanted to try a free-to-play model with in-game purchases. If things went well, a game in that genre and with that monetization could fulfill my plans and provide the funding I’d need for FoN3.

 

Even though I was willing to take a risk, I still wanted to minimize it. While development costs would be relatively low by my estimates, I’d still need to invest something. I didn’t want to reuse the exact same assets from FoN2 – I wanted to adapt the setting, create unique heroes, and offer different skins. I’d also need server infrastructure.

 

So while I wasn’t risking all my money, I was still putting a significant amount on the line – and I didn’t want to end up with nothing and no way to move forward with FoN3.

 

That’s where my publisher came in – they had already helped several partners raise funding on Kickstarter, and most of their campaigns were successful. They know exactly how to package a project so that it reaches its funding goal.

 

Kickstarter

I really liked the idea of launching a Kickstarter campaign. Not just because it could bring in funds for development, but also because a successful campaign would prove that there’s demand for this kind of game and give it some initial visibility. Just like going through Greenlight did for me back in the day.

 

But if the primary goal is to pass Kickstarter, then the development process shifts slightly: all effort has to go into making the most impressive trailer possible. That’s what influences people’s decision to back a project more than anything else. Since I’ll be saving money up until the Kickstarter launch, I won’t be able to show off updated graphics. Maybe just some detailed 2D art of the environment, characters, and “fake screenshots” – artwork that simulates in-game visuals.

 

The main draw has to be the gameplay. I need to clearly show the gameplay elements that will excite potential players. It has to look fresh, team-based, and varied – and that all needs to come across in the trailer.

 

And the rest… well, you already know what happened. That’s what all my recent posts have been about.