Doing It All Yourself, with John Evelyn

Inside Indie Games

We’ve talked a lot so far this season about whether or not to specialise in one particular area of making games.

Well, in this episode we’re speaking to John Evelyn. He’s the creator of an entirely hand-drawn first-person adventure game called Collage Atlas. And as you’ll find out he wears many – if not all - of the hats on the project.

John’s “one-man-band” approach is fairly uncommon these days. And perhaps it can be traced back to one of his tutors at university who essentially advised him to become a Jack of All Trades.

He was studying a media course at the time and later went on to work on a number of marketing film campaigns, doing things like graphic design, coding, and digital design.

But a serious illness made John re-evaluate his priorities, and he decided to throw himself into his main passion of making games the moment he was discharged from hospital.

I was still curious to find out why he thought his tutor gave him that advice though. Why didn’t he recommend that John specialise and try to become a master of one particular area?