This article was originally published in Issue 5 of the ICG Zine, July 2024. It was reformatted in December 2025, but has not been edited further.

Thanks to next generation AI technology, Buddy Simulator 1984 simulates the experience of hanging out with a best buddy! Your buddy learns from you, constantly adapting to your interests and personality. But most importantly, your buddy can play games with you!

ICG: Hey all, thanks for being here! I am with the four developers from Not a Sailor Studios which has brought us games like A Game About Literally Doing Your Taxes and Buddy Simulator 1984. Getting started, let’s talk about A Game About Literally Doing Your Taxes. What inspired you guys to go with that genre, and how did that development maybe spill over into a longer term project like Buddy Simulator?

Vince: I think one of the biggest things was after doing A Game About Literally Doing Your Taxes and putting it out just sort of on itch.io, it was the perfect 10-minute game. A lot of YouTubers try to hit that 10-minute mark and they tend to play horror games. So, this game was like the perfect size for a YouTube video. I think that really helped boost the amount of exposure that it got on the internet. Then based on that experience and feedback, it was just like a lot of positive reinforcement, and it really gave us the confidence to develop a longer project.

Josh: Oh, for sure, itch.io has just been wonderful for the indie dev scene. And that’s where we eventually would release the BuddySim demo. But because I think A Game About Literally Doing Your Taxes was one, free, and two, it had a very intriguing name with the horror tag on it. I think people were just like, okay, like, I want to check that out, and I think that definitely helped with the variability of it.

Brandon: And especially because it looked so innocent, too, at the time. But I still have a memory of the day after we released it, because I think, it was pretty much an all nighter at that point, so I was very tired, but the next morning I was messaging Vince on Snapchat and I was like, oh, do you think anyone will play it? And then, of course, I go on YouTube and search it, and there was only one video when I looked it up, but just that one video immediately changed my entire perception. I was blown away, and I just immediately started messaging Vince like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this random person played our game.

DeMarco: We celebrated, we had two YouTube videos and we went to the little diner down the street to do a celebratory dinner for the YouTube videos chopped up.

Josh: We were like, how do we handle this fame, guys? Then things changed when Buddy Simulator came out.

ICG: Yeah. And then literally blink and it’s like, oh, people with more followers and more viewers are playing A Game About Literally Doing Your Taxes. Both of your games at this point have gone viral. How has that been trying to celebrate those viral moments again when you have huge YouTubers and huge influencers checking out your games and plugging them to their audience?

DeMarco: Oh my gosh, I remember the day when like Jacksepticeye played one of the games for the first time it was like kind of like that excitement of YouTube videos kind of trickling down and then we were like, okay, wait is this gonna go to the big guys? And it was like go to YouTube, look up Jacksepticeye, and it was just there and I remember that we were freaking out. We cast it to the TV and everything. As a tiny studio, that’s such a huge morale boost is just seeing people enjoy it.

Brandon: There are these young people that my dad worked with that just watched that video and it’s like oh my god, what? Oh my gosh, that was crazy. But I think that was amazing. But then with Buddy Simulator, I think there was definitely more nerves with it for me. Because you know Taxes was something we made in like 48 hours and Buddy Simulator has been a longer term project.

ICG: Yeah, were you guys anxious at all by people possibly saying negative things about your games?

Vince: Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. There were so many times when all four of us would be like, Oh, Lyrik the live streamer is playing our game, we would all just be on a call watching it, just like, sweating, you know?

DeMarco: So when Buddy Sim released, I spent the next two weeks straight watching streams. We would divide the streams depending on who was online because there’d usually be around six to nine people streaming it at a time or something, and I would just have multiple tabs open of all the streams and I would be checking in to make sure that there were no game breaking bugs and I was there marking down any bugs I saw. It was insane. And to anybody that helped us find an insane bug, like any of those streamers, we put later in the credits as a special thanks.

ICG: I feel like that’s a good way to continue like a community following as well, to be like, “Hey, when the game actually comes out, please play it again because we put you in the credits.”

Josh: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, we learned a lot from launching a game.

ICG: Are there any other notable things from launching a game?

Josh: One of our biggest highs would be when Markiplier finally played the game. For me personally, and I know you guys, I mean, grew up watching and it was like, Oh, it’s a dream if Markiplier would eventually play our game. So when it finally happened, we were all like, all right, we gotta just watch the video, and he loved it. And it was just such a good payoff and such a special payoff and such a special feeling.

Vince: Yeah, just being able to have that accolade of like, oh, MatPat, the game theorist, played our game, and that’s something that’s huge to me just knowing that.

DeMarco: I remember when I was watching a lot of streams, one of the people that kind of got our game’s attention over in like overseas, like in Europe, was a YouTuber by the name of Gronk, and he’s like one of the biggest German content creators, and he’s such a nice guy, like such a very sweet person. He played Buddy Simulator, and it just gave us like a ton of attention when the game was just a demo. And so we included an easter egg and we named a character after him.

ICG: Pivoting a little bit: How was it working with a publisher to get Buddy Simulator on different platforms?

Vince: Yeah, publishers are an interesting part of the indie development because in one sense they’re totally optional but in another sense it is nice when they can do things that you can’t do. For example, we would have never had physical copies of our game if we never had done a publisher.

But with that being said, you gotta be pretty careful just because, especially being a first-time developer, you’re gonna get a lot of offers that are borderline trying to take advantage of you.

Josh: We got told that by some people helping us out in the industry and we’re like, oh, okay, and I think you see it a lot more nowadays which is sad. There are some bad eggs, but the publishers that we’re working with to make this all happen and get the game on consoles, they’ve been wonderful and like Vince said, we literally couldn’t have done this without them. I think we released it, we self-published it on PC and then I think we were like, oh, we’re good. You’ve got to be smart and do your research on your publisher. I think we got a leg with that. And then we also had a publisher for A Game About Literally Doing Your Taxes. And they got that for the Nintendo Switch. That was our first introduction to publishers.

But again, we did our research. But definitely recommend it if you want to bring your game to different platforms without the proper budget.

DeMarco: I remembered working with the game about literally doing your taxes. Sometimes you get really nice, genuine people that have a very great mission – where it’s like, we want to just give exposure to a lot of small indie games and stuff that we liked on itch.io and get a few indie games on Nintendo.

ICG: Do you guys have any advice for other indie developers or other people wanting to go indie or struggling to stay in the indie realm and world?

Brandon: Yeah, I mean, I guess there’s two sides to it, cause when it at least comes to taking on a project and especially with learning, because I know you know game development in general can be a very intimidating thing. and you know there’s a lot to learn.

But the thing I always try to tell people who are intimidated to get into it, is basically keep coming up with ideas that you’re really passionate about so much so that you can constantly keep finding new things to accidentally learn along the way, because at least in my own development of just learning how to make games, that was how it started. I had an idea, I had no idea what I was doing, and I just kept messing up until things clicked. And then, you know, I picked something up from that and learned a new skill, and then it was like, okay, cool, now I’m going to make this other thing. And now that I know how to do that. And then each time there was something I didn’t know how to do, which kind of forced me into wanting, I wasn’t learning to learn in a class situation, but more learning to make a thing that I was really wanting to make. Keep finding excuses to make something.

Vince: Yeah, I think that’s a really good statement, just because it’s so much more motivating to learn something with a goal in mind already, rather than just learning and then thinking, oh, later on. Maybe I’ll have an idea that utilizes this thing I learned. And I think in terms of indie dev, I just think a lot of people are scared to get into it because finding the open door can be harder than some other things. And I think a really good tool is game jams, just a place to really jump into the deep end and get your feet wet. And just see how you work in a team, or how you work, what you like about doing games, or the game creation process. And also, just meeting other people who are also just passionate about the thing that you’re passionate about. It’s like a really good, positive reinforcement.