I’ve had many projects and plates spinning these days between writing books, the YouTube channel, and all these design articles I’ve written, but another challenge I took on in late 2024 and into the end of 2025 was offering my expertise as a consultant for a smaller indie company, Honor Games. Their first release is out now with Charge!, and they gave me permission to go over my thoughts on observing an actual game’s development for the first time in my career.
My Role
Honor Games reached out to me in 2024 after seeing my article on Command & Conquer, wanting me to help them out with an RTS project. However, after hearing about my skillset and knowledge with other genres, they asked me to consult on two other projects, one that’s still in early development and their shooter, Charge!. My job was to put my encyclopedic knowledge of game design to help them with moving the design along, doing playtesting, and trying to see this game get finished.
As a clarification point, I have not been paid by Honor Games to promote the game and any payment for my time would be based on any profit made by the game. This kind of structure is a popular one for many starting out teams, but it does lead to some problems that I’ll talk about further down.
The Early Steps
As someone who frequently plays games from developers, I’ve seen games at a variety of stages, but it’s rare for me to see a game before it’s “consumer-ready,” or even outside of the friends and family stage. And as a lifelong gamer, it is a bit jarring to see a game at a stage where there were no assets whatsoever, and then to start seeing things take shape over the months. Looking at the footage I took from one year ago to just before release, it is night and day in terms of the difference. It’s also why it’s so important for anyone interested in talking about design to speak with developers and see the process, as that will come into play in a topic further down.
When I signed up, the game had a test room, a basic prototype and a design doc with some early thoughts to go with it. Over the year and into 2025, I was able to play-test the game at different stages and get to see the development of the GUI and design.
However, one thing that I’ve seen before, because it happened to me in the past, was the problems of trying to take this idea further.
Building and Rebuilding
Part of the reason I was brought on was my expertise in the game dev process and FPS structure, and one thing that I did see as a problem was the amount of time spent trying to decide on the path of the game, which took up a lot of 2024’s time. While the throughline of Charge! was “multiplayer shooter,” the kind of shooter changed many times during the year. The original concept was to make the esports of the future, complete with seasonal play, microtransactions, leagues, etc. This was scraped due to the cost and time to develop, and a smaller scope was eventually settled on.
The visual design of the game really came together in the final months of the project (source: Steam)
This is a good lesson, as the design doc that I first read gave an overall framework of the game, but did not go into detail about the actual mechanics of play.
There were a lot of ideas and brainstorming, but nothing that could be used as a starting point. A lot of the notes in the design doc were centered on a project that is already figured out — detailing steps 4 and on before doing 1 – 3. For designers reading this, when you are thinking about your game at the point that you’re going to build it, you need to decide on what exactly do your mechanics mean? This doesn’t mean that every game development requires a flesh-out design doc day one, but you need to be able to tell someone, including your team, what does someone do in your game?
So many developers struggle with the idea that the first game is going to be “it” for them. That they spend the time trying to create that one perfect game, without often having the experience of working on previous full-scale projects.
The major issue I saw from the outside was that for the first few months on the project, no one could answer one question — what does a match in this game look like? Parts of the design doc referenced systems that were confusing or didn’t have enough detail to be able to start trying to build it. An important lesson, as a designer, you must be able to balance what you want to make with what you can make. This was a bottleneck for the team, as a few weeks went by in this cycle:
- Talk about what we wanted to do.
- Come up with an original idea
- Fail to iterate on it and think about another option.
This returns to the fact that the core gameplay loop took months to settle on. Saying, “My game is a first-person shooter,” does not describe the actual loop. I’ve spoken with novice developers outside of Honor Games who also have that issue — they don’t understand the difference between saying what their genre is vs. the gameplay loop of their title. One of my first suggestions was for the team to draw a line in the sand and accurately state what it looks like to play this game.
A big example that went through multiple iterations was the use of mirrors and mirrored surfaces. The original idea was that there were mirrors set up that players could angle shots at other players. Then there was an entire point of having utility grenades that could do different things: like making walls and surfaces mirrored. Eventually, this was scaled down to a “reflection” power up that players could pick up that led to some amazing footage that was used in the marketing.
I’ve seen plenty of novice and first-time developers struggle with this point — not setting their core gameplay loop and instead keep dancing around the point and working on everything else. You cannot put the cart before the horse in this respect, as it always leads to wasted time, energy, and often getting burned out on the entire project.
Hands Off
Part of the problem that led to the delays and time lost was an unfortunate part of this team model. No one on Honor Games was receiving a paycheck, and that meant that there was no incentive to push to make these changes and decisions ASAP. It took months of hemming and hawing before people were brought onto the team who could push changes and get the decisions for the design locked down. Part of this was hiring a designer who would assume the lead role, and the project began to have a path forward.
You can see me in this shot, probably about to be shot at. (Source: Steam)
I feel some of this has to do with the mindset of going from being a modding team to a complete gamedev team.
Honor Game’s first foray into game development was attempting to make a conversion mod for Command & Conquer 3. Working with an already developed framework and assets is different from making everything from scratch. There was no one occupying the role of project manager for the first year, as I felt that no one wanted to be the “bad guy” to tell everyone that they must do X, and that, with no money at stake, no one wanted to take on the additional responsibilities. Much like the lead designer, a manager was brought on to help guide the game’s development. When the project ended, I asked them for their thoughts on working with Honor Games.
Working with Honor Games for the short time I was there allowed me to grow more in my production skills. In the beginning, my production mentor mentioned I should join an indie game to get a new project under my belt and surprisingly, a few days later, Eric Chou (CEO of Honor Games) reached out to me asking if I could be a Producer for Charge! One interview later, I landed the revenue-share role and I joined a team that wanted to produce a fun, laser tag inspired arena game.
Since it was volunteer hours, I would do what I could after my job(s) hours and help where I was needed: Roadmap to game’s completion, launch demos/game on Steam, run meetings, take notes, update the CEO, check in with the leads, social media posting, post-production (check sales, update team, stream, roadmap for future development), etc.
I’m thankful for Honor Games for giving me a chance to prove I can work with a team and help them deliver their game Charge!. Retrospectively, it helped me grow stronger and see areas that need improvement and what areas I’m strong in on a team. If Honor Games gets the funding it deserves, I would love to join the company again since it was great to work with everyone there and with Eric. — Kelsey
Having tried my hand at working with friends and locals in the past, I saw the same issues here that I did with trying to make a game when there are no stakes or management going on. Everyone loves to give ideas and talk about how great something will be when it’s done, but very few people want to get down to work and do it; especially for a small project and even more so when there is no pay.
Small projects can turn into endless labor, with people either getting burnt out or just tired of working without pay and leaving. Thankfully, the additions of the lead and manager gave Charge! a structure and, more importantly, an endpoint to shoot for. Everyone knew at this point that the game isn’t going to be the next Call of Duty, but at the same time with the project finished, no one was going to lose a house over this game.
For Honor (Games)
Win or lose, being able to have a finished game under your credit is a huge deal for everyone involved. For me, it means that I can now definitively say that I’ve done consulting work for a finished game project and will be happy to keep working with Honor Games. For the rest of the team, they also got to experience the joy and nightmare of taking a game idea from nothing but a thought to something finished. While it might not be what everyone wanted from the original concept, if the team wants to keep working together, they will be in a better place for it.
Now that Charge! is available on Steam, the team deserves praise for having an end product. Everyone must start somewhere and getting your first game done isn’t (and shouldn’t be) the end of your career, but the beginning for something new.
And lastly, here are some thoughts from Eric Chou, the owner of Honor Games:
Hello,
I’m Eric, Executive producer on charge! Upon reflection on the project’s development and release, the biggest lesson and takeaway I have, is the importance of vision. I had a very basic vision for the project, laser tag with mirrors. The vision was too basic, and there were countless questions in terms of nitty gritty design that demanded and needed definition., which I was not ready for at the outset.
Where I intended freedom, others saw a lack of structural design. As this was our 1st commercial release, we as a team all learned a lot. Everyone stepped up to the plate, and we delivered a polished product, that has a lot of potential. We shall see if we will release updates and further iterations, but as of now, we have no plans on doing so. It’s also important to remember, we were largely a volunteer based team, which I think we’ve done very well with the constraints we had.
I want to thank everyone who has participated, and hope more players can enjoy our debut title.
- I am available for consulting work on game projects. Feel free to reach out to me anyway you can.
If you’re interested in my talks on game design, be sure to follow me on Bluesky
