Timofey Mishakov, who previously did stand-up for 5 years, talked about his indie game Leo: The Square. It’s a minimalist 2D platformer that will be playable at the Steam Next Fest demo festival next week.
Timofey Mishakov, who previously did stand-up for 5 years, talked about his indie game Leo: The Square. It’s a minimalist 2D platformer that will be playable at the Steam Next Fest demo festival next week.
«I used to do stand-up comedy, performing for five years and working on various comedy projects. But a year ago I realized that I had lost interest in this activity and started looking for a new goal. I thought for a long time about what I was really interested in, until I accidentally came across another article about game development,» Mishakov said on the Gamedev DOU forum.
According to him, he had dreamed of creating his own game since childhood, but always thought it was too difficult. He was «scared by programming,» creating graphics, publishing the game on Steam, and other nuances, but Mishakov still decided to develop it.
«Leo: The Square is a minimalist 2D platformer that focuses on atmosphere and interesting level design. Players explore different locations, solve puzzles, and meet unique characters,» reads the game’s description on Steam.
The developer notes that the gameplay of his project is meditative and not fast-paced. He was inspired by games such as Thomas Was Alone and Super Meat Boy. He saw that a similar style could be done stylishly and atmospherically, and realized that his game idea had potential.
«I wrote to a friend who worked at Ubisoft and 4A Games (he used to go to my performances). He agreed to help, and we took apart my code. It turned out that I had done everything wrong. It was a shame that almost all of the code consisted of excerpts from tutorials that I didn’t even fully understand. After the first conversation, he advised me to rewrite the character’s movement from scratch, taking into account the errors I found,» Mishakov said about the difficulties in developing the game.
Leo: The Square currently has a Steam page and a ready-made demo that can be tried out next week at Steam Next Fest.
«For me, this is an important step, because I want as many people as possible to try the game. Releasing the demo is like training before the full release, so for me it is a very interesting and useful experience,» says the developer.
The game is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2025. It will have Ukrainian and Russian text localization.
