Pierre-Yves Denonfoux launches his first game: "Starbug Troopers: The 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse".

A graduate of the Mastère Spécialisé designer d'expériences immersives, interactives et ludiques in 2024, Pierre-Yves Denonfoux is a video game and immersive experience designer and Product Owner at CNC.

He is the sole creator of " Starbug Troopers: The 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse ", a turn-based strategy and shoot 'em up video game available since September 15.

The pitch: In the microscopic world of insects, confront the 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse who are polluting your environment and destroy their armies with your Starbugs, insect ships.

It's a childhood dream. I discovered many games that made me dream throughout my childhood, and I always wanted to create my own.

After GOBELINS, I felt ready to go it alone, thanks to everything I'd learned during the Master's program.

"Starbug Troopers: The 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse

In visual terms, I drew a great deal of inspiration from "Pikmin", notably for its colorful little creatures evolving in a large-scale natural environment.

Another major source of inspiration was "Advance Wars", from which I took both the strategic spirit and the humor, but also the colorful aspect. It was important to me that, despite the "warlike" context, the game world remained light and accessible.

I also liked the very satisfying idea of being able to slalom at full speed between reeds, flowers and mushrooms.

The burning question! I didn't finance the development of the game in the traditional sense . One of the advantages of creating a solo game is that you can keep costs down and dispense with certain expenses.

I developed the game using Unreal Engine, which is freely available to anyone who wants to get started. Of course, you still have to support yourself, so I've kept a salaried job on the side.

Screenshot of "Starbug Troopers: The 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse".

For the first six months, I was 100% on the game. This enabled me to be very efficient and to concentrate fully on development. I also devoted part of my time to communications, as I felt it was crucial to get this underway at the earliest stages of the project.

Then, for the next six months, Idivided my time between my salaried activity and game development. It was a difficult exercise, because I had to manage to stay focused while alternating between two very different worlds. But the good thing was that it kept me going right to the end!

Screenshot of "Starbug Troopers: The 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse".

I mainly used social networks to communicate about the project. At first, I tried out a bit of every channel : posts on X and Bluesky, videos on TikTok and Instagram, and even a few lives on Twitch.

This allowed me toexperiment with different formats and better understand community expectations. Quite quickly, I noticed that certain platforms were more receptive than others, soI focused on those that generated the most engagement.

"Starbug Troopers: The 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse

The training course made me realize that I could do it, not because I was an expert in every field (far from it...), but becauseit gave me an overview of everything involved in creating a game.

Each specialist I met in his or her field gave me precious keys to understanding and progressing on my own.

So right now, I'm going to get some rest! But I'll get back to creating a game a little later, that's for sure!

Screenshot of "Starbug Troopers: The 4 Horseflies of the Apocalypse".

Go for it! We're living in very special times for the video game industry: on the one hand, there have never been so many free, high-performance tools for creating games; on the other, the sector is going through a major crisis, with a significant hiring freeze.

So really, don 't hesitate to take the plunge. Particularly as independent games are on a roll at the moment. So why deprive yourself?