26. Sam Eng: On Indie Games and Skating Through Hell

What does it take to build a work of art by yourself, on a macbook, in a Brooklyn rare oatmilks only coffee shop, with zero team, no water cooler, no corporate handbook, and no guarantee whatsoever it'll work?That's the question at the heart of this conversation with Sam Eng, the rad indie game developer behind Skate Story - one of the most visually and emotionally striking games to come out in recent years. With an 85 on Metacritic and a perfect ten on Steam, Skate Story puts you in the shoes of a glass demon skating down into the underworld. It's part Dante's Inferno, part vapourwave fever dream, part meditation on fear and fragility. And I love it. Needed some sharp elbows to make sure I can get Skate Story gametime over Mario Kart or Animal Crossing on the Switch 2!In this episode, Sam walks us through the building blocks of solo indie game development: how everything from 3D modelling and animation to code, sound design, and world-building comes together inside the Unreal engine on a 16-inch MacBook Pro. He talks about how he cold-emailed the band Blood Cultures via Bandcamp, met them at a coffee shop on the Lower East Side, and built one of gaming's most hyper-simpatico audiovisual collaborations.We also get into the culture underneath the game. Sam is a skater, traversing Manhattan as his primary mode of transport. He unpacks the no-pads ethos of street skating, the elemental simplicity of a skateboard as material culture, and how the metaphor of a glass demon who must skate despite being made of breakable material connects directly to the vulnerability of stepping onto a board.The conversation opens up into a debate about gaming as a medium. Is it taken seriously enough? What separates meaningful play from fast food gaming? And what can it teach kids about agency?We hope you enjoy.