Amid ongoing turmoil in the gaming industry, the creators of Hyper Light Drifter explain their decision to turn to Patreon.

It’s not exactly much of a secret that a lot of indie devs are struggling to stay afloat these days given the economic *gestures vaguely at a world map.* No one has an exact solution either, but last December, just before the release of its latest game Hyper Light Breaker, noted indie developer Heart Machine announced that they were opening a Patreon. I won’t act like this is exactly a novel concept, I’ve seen a few other devs, typically on the smaller or solo size, try the same thing. But it still felt like a sign that Heart Machine needed a bit of a boost to keep things going.

Heart Machine founder Alx Preston recently spoke with The Verge at GDC about the team’s reasoning behind starting the Patreon, offering up some pretty candid explanations. “The Patreon’s there, really, to open up to the community and talk about certain things when it comes to game development,” Preston said. “I think there’s still a lot of distance between developers traditionally and the audience that consumes what they make — what we make — so finding ways to dig back in and have a conversation there is important.”

Obviously, money is a factor too – “Industry dynamics have changed a lot, so money is tough to come by in a lot of ways,” Preston said, continuing, “Whatever we can do to support ourselves and stay alive longer term is an important thing to turn to, as well.” Preston did make the point that the Patreon isn’t a huge piece of the studio’s revenue, but if “you keep engaging and keep doing more stuff there, it’s a different model than going to publishers for money all the time.”

Quite aptly, he said that right now it’s the “experimental phase of figuring out what the f*ck works these days.” Honestly, power to them for giving something like this ago. Getting a finished game out feels like a bit of a miracle these days, so I hope the extra support does pan out.

Right now Heart Machine are working on the aforementioned Hyper Light Breaker, a more live-servicey sequel to 2016’s Hyper Light Drifter. When it launched into early access earlier this year, the overall package didn’t really work all that well.

Personally I haven’t gone back to it since then, I’m waiting on a few more updates to arrive, even if I’m not entirely sold on its radical departure from the original game just yet. The other game it’s working on, Possessor(s), might be a bit more up my alley though. Fingers crossed the team can keep things going!