Thousand Ant Indie Dev Podcast - Dan Cook (Dev of Cozy Grove with Spry Fox)

In this episode of the Thousand Ant Podcast Matt Mirrorfish speaks with indie video game developer Dan Cook, developer of Cozy Grove, Triple Town and Alphabear, among many others together with David Edery and the team at Spry Fox. We talk about indie game development theory, game design and Dan's story in the game industry.

Find Tom on Twitter:   / danctheduck  

Read Dan's blog at: https://lostgarden.home.blog/

---

Learn Unity and game development with experienced indie game developers. Subscribe for tutorials, devlogs, and gamedev advice uploaded weekly.

Visit us on Discord, ask questions and share your work:   / discord  

Follow us on Twitter:   / thousandant  

Visit our website: http://thousandant.com

=================================

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:40 How Dan Cook started in the business
00:09:12 Merged games, Triple Town
00:13:08 Talking about Casual Games
00:19:22 Premium games and mobile free-to-play games
00:24:19 Game studio budgets, Retention, Monetization
00:34:55 The free players add value
00:36:42 Games as a service
00:42:53 Steam as an incubator for indie games
00:45:07 Twitch and Youtube as curators, Apex Legends, Minecraft
00:49:36 How to be a good game designer?
00:54:36 Is there value in ideas?
00:58:15 Combat and games with no combat
01:10:14 Templated content chunks
01:13:26 Link to Lost Garden Article
01:13:48 Tanya Short - In Praise of Messy Design
01:16:19 Elegant design, Board games, Mathematics