Inside the Art of Game Development: Lessons from a Pro Artist

These are the show notes for the interview with Nik Hagialas watch the full interview here

Traveler’s Refrain is a story-driven 2D indie game, launching after 5+ years of development.
Nik is the co-founder, lead artist, and co-designer of the game. His business partner handles programming.
The game is developed by a 5-person indie studio, supported by publisher Indie.io.
The team includes: 3 artists (including Nik), a programmer, and a musician/sound designer.

The project started after Nik lost several freelance clients at once, prompting him to pursue his long-held dream of making a game.
They began with a demo project to get experience and eventually developed a fully playable prototype, showcased at Steam Next Fest.
Publisher support came after proving the game’s fun factor through a working build — "credibility comes after playability."

Visual direction was built around Nik’s existing 2D illustration style.
Early story concept: a struggling musician enters a mystical forest to find a lost love.
The main character's design (inspired by metal musicians) sets the tone for the game world — including hand-drawn animations with expressive details like bags under his eyes.
Character design led the aesthetic and influenced the overall visual direction.

Developed using Unity, chosen for its accessibility to 2D artists.
Nik learned coding basics through tutorials (e.g., GamesPlusJames on YouTube) and encourages artists to at least understand basic programming.
Used Photoshop for frame-by-frame animation and built custom tools (e.g., for distributing foliage using splines).
Tools like Discord, Google Drive, and Spreadsheets were essential for team collaboration and project management.

The team emphasized practical design decisions:
- Used 4-directional movement to halve animation workload.
- Avoided complex animations or visual ideas that would be too resource-heavy in 2D.
- Limited design iterations to reduce time — “early versions had to be good enough.”
Burnout was managed by rotating tasks (e.g., switching from animation to scripting or level design).

Nik realized he could push himself much harder than expected, even balancing new fatherhood with game dev.
Emphasized the importance of tool efficiency — wishes they had optimized the pipeline earlier to save time.
He encourages artists to create small projects and sell something — even if just a comic or print — to learn how to market and present themselves.

Don’t fear starting late: Nik was 34 at launch; other devs succeed later in life.
Small, finished projects matter more than ambitious, unfinished ones.
Focus on learning the pipeline — from ideation to distribution — to develop both creative and business skills.
Ignore AI fear-mongering: “Just keep making stuff.”

Nik already has new game ideas brewing, but is waiting to finish launch and gather feedback before committing.
The team is considering future projects based on this game’s universe or new smaller-scale titles, depending on performance and resources.

Development journey: travelers Refrain