Adam Kugler had an excellent profession making triple-A video games for Blizzard Leisure, working in a 12-year stint of artwork and design jobs that culminated in a job as affiliate recreation director.
However then he left the corporate to pursue his personal dream: a deeply private journey of creating a recreation by himself as founding father of Cyan Avatar Studios. And now he’s unveiling MoteMancer, a fantasy puzzle recreation the place alchemy meets logistics. The PC recreation is in alpha testing and is offered for wishlisting on Steam.
MoteMancer is an attractive recreation, envisioned and produced by Kugler, who left the dream job at a triple-A recreation firm to pursue his ardour. The gamers job is to automate a sustainable pure ecosystem throughout six elemental planes utilizing magical constructions on an alien planet. It’s about restoring life. Kugler spoke about his shift from triple-A to solo dev in a roundtable at our GamesBeat Summit 2025 occasion.
A mote of mud
Adam Kugler is the founding father of CyanAvatar Studios.
The title itself channels Carl Sagan, the creator of Cosmos. Sagan had a well-known quote in regards to the earth being a “pale blue dot,” and that the planet was like a mote of mud suspended in a sunbeam.
The gamers has to make use of alchemical components and spells to create elegant techniques on a 2D hex grid. The six planes are form of like six completely different planets, however they’re all co-located as alternate dimensions in the identical house. You may swap between the planes in actual time.
“I was always really inspired by indie games along the way because you have the food that feeds you as you’re as you’re creating things,” Kugler stated. “And so this is my step into indie as my love letter to the space that inspired me so much.”
Every aircraft has its personal distinctive set of assets and instruments. Gamers clear up logistics puzzles on a hex grid the place magnificence, magnificence, and effectivity naturally happen. Gamers have to find spells, features, and magical constructions via alchemical experimentation. And so they must defend their pure community towards Entropy, a creeping adversary that disrupts your designs. The purpose is to revive the sport’s essential portal. In every of the planes, the participant has to entry completely different instruments.
MoteMancer has magical techniques working collectively.
“I come from a system design background, and so one of the things I wanted to provide was every single plane has its own set of tools,” Kugler stated. “I really like sandbox games, where players have their own tools and their own way to solve the problems that they create for themselves. Like Minecraft, Factorio and iso-Sphere.”
The title bears no resemblance to the work that Kugler did at Blizzard, which included the World of Warcraft massively multiplayer on-line role-playing recreation, which had an enormous improvement group.
As you may inform from a fast have a look at the trailer, MoteMancer is an attractive recreation that appears prefer it was constructed by a a lot larger group. Kugler self-funded the sport and constructed it himself, with some assist from pleasant builders. He’s capturing for a demo launch by June in time for the subsequent Steam Subsequent Fest and Automation Fest in July.
The solo life
MoteMancer is a part of a solo dev development amongst indies.
Kugler isn’t alone in turning his again on triple-A and going the solo route. Some widespread indie hit video games made largely by one particular person embody Billy Basso’s Animal Properly (an enormous hit in 2024 that was remodeled seven years); Balatro, which was made by the nameless developer LocalThunk; George Fan’s Octogeddon (made by two folks); Potions, remodeled a decade by Renee Gittins and a small group.
Motoviti had a few devs and a small group who labored on Elroy and the Aliens for 11 years. And Stardew Valley, which bought greater than 41 million copies, was made by Eric Barone. Jonathan Blow can also be well-known for making video games as a solo dev on titles like Braid and The Witness.
In fact, as with many hit solo video games, Kugler is getting loads of assist. There are classes the place he tapped freelance contributors for assist. However the imaginative and prescient was his. He thinks of it as a “love letter to the genre” of fantasy automation, which strikes away from extra conventional industrial advanced video games.
MoteMancer is about sustainability in a magical nature.
One buddy helps optimize the sport. One other centered on improvements. An artist helped do idea work. However Kugler did about 80% of the sport and doubtless 95% of the coding.
Alexandria Makova composed music for the sport underneath a contract. The music will get extra intense when you need to take care of issues like meteors, tornadoes and different disasters.
“It’s not necessarily about making the largest factory possible. It’s more about the logistics puzzles,” he stated.
Sport mechanics and Elemental interplay
MoteMancer has a sophisticated analysis tree.
Kugler stated the sport mechanics use the usage of energy crops, root techniques, and alchemical parts. The sport permits gamers to go to completely different planes, every with its personal set of parts and instruments, making a dynamic and interconnected world. The planes create challenges, the place you may’t place sure buildings in a few of the planes. And the fixed enemy is entropy — the notion that pure forces have a tendency towards dysfunction — which saps vitality from the participant’s bases.
In a single stage. you employ photo voltaic leaves to take in vitality from the solar, however you may’t do this within the shadow aircraft. The analysis tree contains air, water, life, earth, hearth and shadow. Every one has a unique form of energy to gasoline the creations.
“There’s an enemy in the game, but it’s much more of a relaxed enemy, as it is entropy. That’s this black and white cloud I can actually show up,” he stated.
There are tremendous highly effective combos of parts. Life and water, for instance, can develop coral, which is only a sluggish progress course of. In the event you’re enjoying earth and hearth, there are self-powered rivers that may transfer gadgets while not having to make use of energy. Shadow and hearth have a mix that allows you to do wi-fi energy so you may broadcast it throughout very disparate areas.
“What I’m hoping is for players can find the super powerful pieces that speak to them the most and then choose them as their main base of operations,” he stated.
Discovering the time
An icy aircraft in MoteMancer.
Kugler spent about 2.5 years growing the sport, beginning first as a facet undertaking whereas he was at Blizzard Leisure. Blizzard had an official program for facet tasks.
“I love automation and probably have thousands of hours in automation games at this point, across many different games,” he stated.
Kugler was educated as an artist, and he used the Unity recreation engine to make the sport. He needed to be taught coding so as to do the undertaking. He used ChatGPT to brainstorm and he used Trello for monitoring duties.
In the end, Kugler has a ardour for uplifting the subsequent technology of creators to make their very own dream video games. The sport additionally has a message about ecological sustainability, whereas most of the video games within the automation house concerned big industrial complexes that pillage the surroundings. Kugler is beginning to have interaction with creators who may also help publicize the sport.
One of many simple issues about going solo is that he didn’t must create a design doc in order that he might clarify the sport to a 300-person group. When somebody got here in to assist, he must speak to them for some time.
“Ever since working in triple-A, I’ve been super inspired by especially the one to five person teams,” he stated. “A lot of times I wake up and feel like, ‘Here’s what the game needs done today.’”
MoteMancer has a vivid mix of colours.
He admires video games like Valheim, Return of the Obra Din and extra.
“Used sparingly, I think that AI tools are super powerful, but I think they’re more of a workflow helper, rather than like a means to an end,” Kugler stated.
As for the eco-friendly theme, Kugler stated, “There are games that are about revitalizing things. This is very much leaning in that direction, for sure. So I’m not going to go out of my way to call out that you’re an eco fighter. But the game will kind of speak that language itself, I think. That’s what I’m hoping for. It’s just the message of healing lands, assembling something from from things. I think that’s a very human thing to just kind of be a creator.”
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