Building RetroSnake: Dogfooding Our Discovery Platform
Testing NextGame by becoming indie developers ourselves - building a Nokia-style Snake remake to understand emotional game discovery.
Just launched NextGame - our indie game discovery platform Now we're dogfooding it by becoming indie developers ourselves Starting with RetroSnake: Nokia-style Snake remake that we're building to test our own platform
The Impact We're Aiming For
- **Real developer experience** - face the same challenges as the developers we're building for
- **Emotional data collection** - understand what responses different games actually create
- **Marketing validation** - prove our platform can help games get discovered
- **Speed testing** - show that quality games can be shipped in 1-week cycles using AI tools
Why Nokia Games
Nokia games like Snake created specific emotional responses: nostalgia, quick satisfaction, addictive loops. Perfect test case for building a discovery platform that understands how games make people FEEL.
Each game we launch becomes both a product and a case study for how indie developers can succeed.
This is dogfooding, building in public, and solving the indie game discovery problem - starting with ourselves.
What We're Testing
- Can we build and launch a game in one week?
- Does our platform help with discovery?
- What emotional patterns do different games create?
- How can we improve the developer experience?
Follow along as we build in public and test whether our platform actually solves the problems we think it does.