Writing and Producing Cozy Indie Video Games
Steve Durán, director of Ogre Pixel, talked about how the studio was created, spoke about the games they have developed, and discussed the tools they use for production.
Introduction
First, as an introduction, my name is Steve Durán. I'm a family man and the director of Ogre Pixel, a small game development studio based in Aguascalientes. Like everyone else, I started playing video games from a very young age. Ogre Pixel actually started as a personal project.
Back around 2013, I discovered that you could make games with Unity, and it was an accessible tool for everyone. I started creating small games in my free time and gradually set more ambitious goals. Over time, that's how Ogre Pixel turned into a full-fledged studio and how it was born as a passion project.
At Ogre Pixel, as I mentioned, we started in our spare time, and I wasn't working alone. My wife was involved from the beginning, creating the stories for our games and always supporting me on this big journey. Nowadays, she works as a producer on some of our projects and continues to create stories for our games as well.
The Games
Our portfolio at Ogre Pixel is quite diverse. We have games in different genres, and some of the most notable milestones include Black Tower Enigma as the first full game made by us. Warcher Defenders for mobile, which was our first successful game, where we realized we could actually monetize and earn money from making games.
Later on, with Jumper Jon, we took a huge step forward thanks to a collaboration with Apple to launch it on Apple Arcade. Then Lonesome Village became our first game on PC and consoles, which was a very important leap for Ogre Pixel.
After that, A Tiny Sticker Tale was our first title with a physical edition. And now, Castlebound is our latest exciting venture that we believe is really interesting, and we'd love more people to get to know.
In terms of how we approach development at Ogre Pixel, we start with a solid brainstorming phase to see what ideas might work well in the market. After the pandemic, we actually shifted to working remotely, which reduced our costs significantly since we no longer needed a physical office. However, we had to learn to communicate better.
Some of the tools we use include Unity for developing our games, SourceTree as a client for our code repositories, and GitLab as our main code repository platform. We use Discord as our communication channel, where we have calls and various channels to share information.
Basically, we have two main development teams: art and programming. The game's creative director or lead is in constant communication with all of them. Even though we're based in Mexico, and many of us are in the same city, we work locally in a remote setup. So that's how we manage everything, balancing creativity with practical remote work solutions to keep technology and costs in check.
So, when it comes to distribution at Ogre Pixel, our main platforms are Steam and Nintendo Switch. That's because, given the type of games we create, these platforms tend to monetize best for us. We actually started out making games for mobile devices, and thanks to that experience, we also release our games on mobile platforms.
We've launched games on Apple Arcade, on Crunchyroll Games, and directly on Google Play and the App Store as well. So our primary platforms are Steam and Nintendo Switch, and mobile is our next key platform.
Conclusion
From our perspective at Ogre Pixel, we believe that in 2026 and beyond, there will always be a special place among players for indie games. Even though these projects might not be huge in scale, they're made with a lot of heart and creativity. We expect that there will continue to be a space for these kinds of games, and that's something we really care about.
At Ogre Pixel, we want to keep creating fantastic stories in the form of indie games with interesting and different approaches, and we hope that this will remain relevant and enjoyable for players for many years to come.
