Working On Non-Funded Indie Projects
What Are Non-funded Indie Projects?
“Non-Funded Indie Projects” as the name suggests are games that don’t have any money backing the development process. In simpler terms a passion project with a dev team that is working on it in their spare time without getting any money.
These projects tend to have very small teams of people who are either making a game for fun, trying to get into the industry or creating a demo in the hopes of receiving funding from a publisher.
Why Should I Work On One?
Small unpaid indie projects are a fantastic way to gain real-life experience in the industry, hone your craft and of course, make friends and build your network.
They make for great portfolio pieces (even if they are unfinished) and you’ll stand out from the crowd of applicants who only have the standard Wwise demo projects in their showreels.
It also shows initiative, collaboration and most importantly a passion and drive to make games.
How & Where Do I Find Them?
To find loads of small indie projects simply join a couple of these Facebook groups below and then press control+f or use the Facebook page search function to look for #screenshotsaturday.
The purpose of this is to filter the content to only show screenshots of games that people are currently working on.
The next step is to look through all of the posts and find games that you like the look of and don’t have any audio yet.
Once you’ve found a game I would highly recommend screen recording some of the gameplay and adding your own sound design and potentially music to it. The length of the clip should be 5-20 seconds.
Then get in contact with the developers and send them your short demo with a friendly text that says something along the lines of: “I’d love to help out with the audio on the project, here is a short demo that I’ve put together.”
The reason for doing this is to make it as easy as possible for the developers to say yes. By creating a demo you show that you’re really passionate about the project and most importantly give them a solid idea of what the game will sound like once it has sound.
Here is another quick video summary of the different steps:
https://youtu.be/Pek_IgmEqQQ?t=332
Alternatively, you can also look for games on Kickstarter which are close to being funded and don’t have an audio person on the team yet, then follow the same process as above.
Facebook Groups:
Indie Game Developers (Facebook Group):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndieGameDevs
Kickstarter
The Kickstarter games section:
https://www.kickstarter.com/games?ref=discovery_overlay
