This week we’re shining the BB spotlight on award-winning game designer and founder of Lucid Labs, Chirag Chopra. As a creator and indie games developer, his visually stunning titles have been making their mark in the industry around the world. His game ‘Possessions’ won the ‘Indie Game of the Year’ award at India GDC 2019. However, Possession isn’t his only hit. Many of his other titles, including Stay, Mum, and That Little Star, have been featured across platforms in multiple countries, earning more than 10 million downloads. Chopra also is a frequent speaker at various game conferences and events like the Casual Connect and PocketGamer Connects, sharing his knowledge and experience with others.
We were excited to find out that he’s also recently decided to join the Buildbox community! Chopra posted on Twitter:
I’ve been making games on Unity for 6 years & I recently purchased @buildbox only to find out how fun and intuitive it is to quickly create a game in it!
It’s almost like a therapy session & I can’t put it down now.#gamedev #alldev #indiedev— Chirag Chopra (@notthatchirag) April 6, 2020
So, it was an honor to have the opportunity to welcome him aboard and chat a little about his creative process when making games, tips for success, and new free accountability tool WeMake.Games for indie developers.
Buildbox.com: Can you share a little bit about your background and how you got started making games?
Chirag Chopra: I’ve always had one career option – to be able to build games for a living. And whatever I did in my life was to get one step closer to my goal. During my Master’s in Game Design, I started participating in game jams and learning game engines. It was when we won our first game jam, and we decided to build the jam game into a commercial game. That’s how Lucid Labs was born, with the game ROTO.
Buildbox.com: Your recent Apple Arcade game, Possessions was a huge hit. What was your inspiration behind the game?
Chirag Chopra: Possessions is the result of months of desperation and prototyping. Initially, we wanted to build a game with a focus on narrative but soon realized due to our limitations; it would be best to focus on something with puzzles with an implicit story behind it. I personally wanted to explore the wonderful world of perspective and how looking at things from different angles or perspectives could bring a different meaning to it altogether. We prototyped the mechanic in a week, showed it around to a few friends, and they liked it. That marked the beginning of a three-year-long journey, with getting selected in Google Indie Games Accelerator, and eventually launching the game on Apple Arcade with our publisher Noodlecake.
Buildbox.com: What led you to create a free accountability tool, WeMake.Games for indie developers?
Chirag Chopra: Fun fact about Lucid Labs – we’ve never owned a physical office or even a team that shared the same space. Every member of the team is remote and from different parts of the world. I’ve been making games with a remote team from the past six years now, and often felt isolated and lost the will to keep going. But soon, I realized that looking at other devs’ games and progress kept the fire burning in me. That led to the creation of wemake.games with the goal of creating a unified space for game makers, irrespective of their roles, to come together and stay accountable by sharing their goals and work-in-progress.
Buildbox.com: We loved your recent Tweet about our software. How did you discover Buildbox?
Chirag Chopra: Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been involved in Possessions from the past three years and god, it has been a fun but hectic journey. I was interested in Buildbox for quite some time and finally decided to give it a try after they released a free version. That’s how I discovered this magic tool, which gives access to the world of game development to just about anybody, removing all technical barriers, if any.
Buildbox.com: What makes Buildbox different from other game engines you’ve used?
Chirag Chopra: The best thing about Buildbox has to be its ease-of-use. I mean, how easy is it to load it and start working on a mechanic. Thanks to the node system in BB3, it’s super easy to add logic to your game objects and start testing your creative ideas. One other thing I liked about the engine is that it comes loaded with pre-built ‘Brainboxes’ which makes it easy to add basic behaviors to your game objects with just a click of a button.
Buildbox.com: We’re glad you’re now part of the Buildbox community. Welcome aboard! How has your experience been so far, learning to use Buildbox? Is there a feature or setting that you’re really excited about?
Chirag Chopra: It’s only been a few weeks since I’ve started getting my hands dirty, but I can tell how badly I wish to make it my weapon of choice in developing games. I am really excited about Node System, and soon hope to be a master of it. It’s still early for us, we are still exploring the engine and mapping out its limitations, but we think we will be able to craft something out of it very soon.
Buildbox.com: What’s one piece of advice that you think every indie game developer should follow for success?
Chirag Chopra: The best part about game development is – there’s no one ‘gold’ advice to follow. What works for me might not work for you, so I only advise all of you to not blindly follow any advice but see what works for you best. But I’d like to mention one of the things I keep telling everyone – if you are just starting, you DON’T have to aim big. Focus on building small things and getting better at what you do. Like everything else, you get better at it with practice and, of course, a fair bit of luck, so sit back and enjoy the journey while you are at it. Have fun, that’s the most important thing, and take out time for your family and friends.
Buildbox.com: Any upcoming games in the works? What can we expect to see from Lucid Labs in the future?
Chirag Chopra: Currently, we are building additional levels for Possessions but we’ve already started prototyping ideas for our next game. Still very early to say what that might lead to, but we also want to focus on wemake.games, make sure we build a product that people want to use and help them in whatever way we can.
Buildbox.com: Wow, we’re looking forward to checking out that update and can’t wait to see what you end up creating with Buildbox in the future!
You can learn more about Chirag Chopra on his website. Also, to sign up for his free accountability tool to help you stay on track of your game development goals just click on the button below:
