Regain Earth: First Strike (short REFS) is the first game that I developed myself and moreover I developed it by far the most time alone. For this reason, the gameplay is initially kept “relatively simple“.

REFS is a kind of “wave shooter” or “horde shooter” that you can play multiplayer with friends. REFS can be roughly described as a mixture of “Binding of Isaac” (rouge-like, random, items, permadeath, rounds, bossfights), “Killing Floor” (horde shooter, rounds, maps, bossfights), Counter-Strike (tactical, rounds, maps), mixed with Science-fiction elements (futuristic) and some special abilities and features. In addition, REFS is played from a “third-person perspective” (the player sees himself from the third person).

Initially only cooperative team play as PvE (players together against computer). No PvP (no player against player). REFS also offers many Achievements (Steam Achievements) as well as you can earn.

Take on the challenge and survive increasingly powerful waves of evil mutants and aggressive robots! Grab 1-2 buddies and go on the action-packed hunt together! Earn points and rewards for new features, new weapons and new maps.

In Discord we collect suggestions for REFS. You’ll already find masses of ideas for changes and additions in Discord that you can choose. Join the community and help shape the future of Regain Earth!!!

On Steam you can find a very detailed REFS description, which I also update every few weeks. This should reflect the vision of Regain Earth very well and give you detailed info if you want to know more: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1408710/Regain_Earth_First_Strike/.

I work with Unreal Engine. For 3D shooters, I could have used Unity as well as Unreal Engine. Both are very good for 3D games. I personally liked Unreal better.

I don’t agree with the majority, because by far the most indie games are not made with Unreal, but with Unity or other game engines. So, Unreal doesn’t have to be the best choice for your game project.

For a fantastic overview of which engine is often used for indie games, check out Itch.io: https://itch.io/game-development/engines/most-projects.

Itch.io is a great website where small studios (or small solo game developers) can publish their first projects well. The list linked above shows very well which game engines most of them use.

You can find a lot of tutorials online for all game engines. So really very, very much! Just use Google or the search engine of your choice and search for tutorials and learn with it. See also more about this at point “I want to develop games too. How do I start?“.

In Unreal Engine you can program in C++ as well as use something called “Visual Scripting“, in Unreal this is also called Blueprint. One comes with Blueprint on visual Scripting method relatively far, bumps however at borders and should always also C++ fundamentally know (or learn). You can google for both game engines very well and find hundreds if not thousands of good tutorials and videos on YouTube for both game engines.

Ansonsten verwende ich noch folgende Tools:

  • Blender for 3D models and animations
  • Quixel Megascans including Mixxer for textures and materials
  • Audacity for audio editing
  • DaVinci Resolve for video editing
  • Gimp for image editing
  • Visual Studio Community Edition for Unreal Engine C++

Do you ever make your own videos how to develop games?. If necessary, I really make times own tutorials about game programming for you and also how I work on REFS. At the moment, however, I have no time for this at all, because you want to play as REFS as a full version sometime. And I am still covered with work up to far over the head.

The game is not officially rated yet.

I can’t say exactly, because the game is still in development and things can still change. The game still has to be rated by the ESRB / PEGI.

As a guideyou can look at other games that have similar graphics: Apex Legens, from 16. CS:GO, starting at 16. COD Warzone, starting at 18. Battlefield, from 16

I think there is a good chance that REFS will also be rated 16. Fortnite is rated 12+, but that game also has comic book graphics. REFS is more like the top games in terms of graphics, so it’s more likely to be rated 16+.

All the younger ones who don’t know if they are allowed to play REFS and the demo, feel free to show the TikTok videos and the Steam website to your parents. In the end, your parents will decide what you can and can’t play.

At First, I will release my game for the PC , this will be on Steam and on the Epic Store. The TikTok videos you may currently already know are also from the PC version.

I will be releasing Regain Earth: First Strike (REFS) on April 28 this year on PC as “Early Access” on Steam. “Early Access” means that you can already buy a game, but it’s still in development. So, I will continue to work on the game and expand and improve Regain Earth in the “Early Access” phase.

I chose the price based on the most votes in the TikTok comments and I also think it’s a fair price. Please see also my TikTok videos: https://www.tiktok.com/@regain.earth.developer/video/6947808595685788933 https://www.tiktok.com/@regain.earth.developer/video/6948576124729363718

In Discord our many, great REFS fans have already delivered so many ideas that I could easily extend and expand REFS for months (or even years). Some of you want the full version already now, so I started REFS as “Early Access” on Steam.

I can use the money to work faster for you on REFS and to finish the game faster for you. I also need to pay rent and buns – and of course expand the REFS development team.

Console versions (PS4, PS5, XBOX, Switch) I’m only going after the PC release. I don’t assume a console release before the end of 2021. Getting REFS to the various consoles is a lot of work. Therefore, I can’t foresee exact release dates per console yet.

Unfortunately, I can’t say yet whether I’ll tackle PS4, PS5, XBOX, Switch or Mobile first after the PC version. But PS4/PS5 and Switch will tend to come relatively early, since many people are asking for it here.

I’m also trying to port and release my game on Smartphone / Mobile , but that doesn’t work out so easily for a game with such good graphics and effects. So, here I can unfortunately promise even less when I will make it.

Whether I can support Mac or Linux I can’t promise yet, unfortunately. I plan to evaluate it after the full release of REFS and give it a try. In Discord there is a channel where you can vote for upcoming features and content updates. You can also vote for a Mac version there. Feel free to come into Discord and vote for your most important features and update content.

You can either request the demo of REFS on Steam or pick up directly and without waiting a demo version in Discord.

How this works with Steam , you can see here in the TikTok video: https://www.tiktok.com/@game.dev.dude/video/6929904659511479558

On Steam, however, it can take 1-6 weeks until one is unlocked after applying for the “Playtest-Demo”. This is because per week of Steam a part of the requests is drawn and this part gets sent a demo key.

If you are already a fan and want to play the REFS demo immediately, then just come to Discord and pick up a key directly! In Discord, a bot runs 24 hours a day and can distribute demo keys around the clock!

If you then have a Steam Demo Key, you can also find instructions directly in Discord on how to use it to activate the REFS Demo in Steam, if you don’t already know that: https://discordapp.com/channels/760127395499212840/813031155859324968/813812963613081611

In Discord, you can also describe ideas, post bugs and vote existing ideas as important.

See also my TikTok video on the price, where I also explain why free2play is not possible for me:: https://www.tiktok.com/@regain.earth.developer/video/6947808595685788933

The price of the game will be between 18 and 25 $/€ and in the “sale” (discount) at release will be about 15 $/€.

I chose the price based on the most votes in the TikTok comments and I also think it’s a fair price. Feel free to see my TikTok video for more information: https://www.tiktok.com/@regain.earth.developer/video/6948576124729363718

If you are one of those people who recommend free2play + itemshop over and over again: Thank you very much for your advice. On the other hand, I can only recommend you to listen to this Tik Tok video of mine, even to the end. Then it should be clear that free2play is simply out of the question and I (for good reason) also do not stand behind the principle.

Consider also that REFS is not a hobby of mine, but also my profession – and also my vocation 🙂

If you want to know more about me, what a big effort it is to produce own games and how much money I invested and why I also have to pay my bills with it, you can also listen to a longer interview with me in a podcast below. Sadly it’s only available in German for now. But I will add some English Interviews as soon as done: https://anchor.fm/respawn-der-gamingpodcast/episodes/027-Regain-Earth—Wie-ein-Solo-Entwickler-den-Traum-vom-eigenen-Spiel-lebt-eu6tqt

In short, REFS is a 3D shooter like Fortnite, COD, Warzone, PUPG, Far Cry, CS:GO and many more. If you have one or more of these games running, then REFS should also run well for you.

In REFS you can turn your quality and display settings (resolution) way down. I myself tested REFS on an 8-year-old notebook. I have to say that the notebook was very good at that time. From an NVIDIA Geforce 680, which is now many years old, the game should run on low settings.

If your PC or laptop does not have a graphics card, it will be difficult. In that case, you’ll have to turn the settings to the absolute minimum and won’t have many frames per second.

You can also look at specific hardware requirements on the Steam page of Regain Earth. On Steam, minimum and recommended requirements are always listed with the games: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1408710/Regain_Earth_First_Strike/.

You can also just play the REFS demo. So you can test for free if REFS runs on your PC!

I’m working really alone on REFS, at least that was the case until March 2021. Since then a buddy helps me part-time with maps, logo design and the like. More info about that below.

In order for the game to look good and be manageable alone at all, I buy a lot of visual elements from asset stores. Well known asset stores are Sketchfab as well as the asset stores of Unreal Engine and Unity. More info on the asset stores below.

I’m trying since 2017 on my dream as a game developer and since then I’m also sitting on my first game. I’m a computer scientist and can therefore already program something. Nevertheless, the creation of a game takes very, very long, even if it is as small in scope as REFS. Since 2017, I have also tinkered with other game ideas, but much of it I have taken over for REFS.

Everything about game development I have taught myself completely. I watched hundreds of YouTube videos, read 5 or more books, worked through a lot of tutorials and tried out a lot of things. So really extremely much time invested to find a good entrance.

The whole thing is really an enormous amount of work! Since September 2020 I work full time as a game developer, before it was only part time as far as I found time.

Now more info about Asset Store, if you are interested: In Asset Stores you can buy 3D models, textures, music, sounds, effects and much more. Since you also have to try out some stuff, I also had to leave a lot of money in the stores. So it is rather a serious investment than a pocket money what I have already sunk there. 🙂

If you go to the imprint of this website, you’ll also see that I already founded a GmbH for my first game in 2017. Most of the money I put into assets stores (3D, textures, animations, sound, music).

The mass of purchased assets comes from the fact that you really have to try out a lot. That is, I bought so to speak 10-20 times the assets and then had to look first, what really fits into the game and how well it was produced.

This (unfortunately) high investment now gives me the opportunity to develop a game alone, where normally at least a team of (estimated at least) 4-8 people would have to sit at it to conjure up the high quality graphics and sound. Even then, REFS is not up to par with games from big game companies like Fortnite, but for a “solo indie game” it looks very good.

Asset stores have of course a huge disadvantage, namely that the assets from them (can) also appear in other games. Some of my 3D models I have seen in other games. But these are rather games, which hardly anyone knows and estimated not even as 1% of the REFS players should know. So most of you won’t care and won’t even notice.

My goal is, of course, to eventually create more 3D models and animations myself with a team to offer you more unique assets! Currently this is very difficult, because making a multiplayer game alone is simply a mammoth task in itself.

Besides that I also do the website, taxes, promotion, TikTok, Discord building, Discord support, answering questions on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, the trailer, the video editing and everything else that comes up around such a game.

Who helps you? Of course people “help” me, these are (few) friends in game testing and active REFS testers in Discord. Just like tax accountants and similar people you can ask things. Also, the REFS logo was made by a buddy of mine, I’ll get to him more below. In the mass of work since 2017, as far as game development is concerned, 98% is made by myself. Also concept, prototypes as well as most (95%) of REFS development is from myself. Of course the Discord community also helps me a lot with their feedback! Many thanks to all active people in Discord, who give feedback and search for bugs! <3

Since March 2021, a buddy of mine at REFS, Devin, has been helping me. He joined REFS part-time and helps me to expand the game faster. But since there will be a long time far more than 90% of me, we agreed that I can still publicly call REFS “my game” for now, because that is much closer to reality than if I now directly say that REFS has created a “team”. Because since 2017 is a long time, and the absolute mammoth part I have created alone so far. However, it’s great that Devin is there now. Because he is a huge enrichment and brings fun to the game project, even if he is only part-time for now. We hope to be able to change that. Thanks Devin! <3

Regain Earth: First Strike (short REFS) is currently designed for a team of 2 to 3 players, I try to expand it later to 2-5 players in the team.

There will be (at least in the first version) no PvP (player vs. player) in REFS. This is because PvP attracts cheaters in particular and it would be a lot of work for a solo game developer to make the game cheat-proof as well. In addition, PvP automatically requires an extremely high quality of hitboxes, multiplayer replication and the entire game.

There are actually no PvP games on the market that are successful and not created by a larger team (or even companies with hundreds, thousands of employees). If you know one, feel free to write me and correct me. 🙂

That’s why you won’t find a Battle Royal game that has a solo GameDev that can compete in any way with Fortnite, Warzone, Apex and co. And that’s why I don’t even need to try to develop a Battle Royal on my own 😉 It just doesn’t work, the effort is huge.

REFS has its very own charm as an indie game, which games like Fortnite, Warzone or Apex Legends don’t offer. Or try chatting with a lead developer in Discord for these games? Or try to get direct feedback from the developers there about your game ideas? Or even get developer responses to your TikTok comments there? This close little community and the with each other, you can only find that with us!

For this REFS gets an update at least every 1-2 weeks and is extended. I usually update Regain Earth even several times a week with small things. This is also something you usually don’t get with big game titles.

So feel free to join the community in Discord and help shape the future of Regain Earth!!!

Die meisten Multiplayer Shooter kosten viele, viele Millionen Euro in der Herstellung, meist sogar hunderte Millionen Euro. Dazu werden diese Spiele von hunderten, zum Teil wenigen tausenden Menschen programmiert (designt, etc.)

So you will always find things that are much more extensive, detailed or better in these games than in REFS. Also, my animations and textures can’t quite keep up, even though REFS already has very good graphics for a solo GameDev project.

I would only compare my game to Fortnite and co. to a limited extent, especially since my game also has rouge-like elements. If applicable, you know games like Binding of Isaac, which are mostly pixel art and not a 3D shooter, but still REFS is a mix of that kind of game genre, paired with badass and atmospheric 3D shooter base. 🙂

REFS has its very own charm as an indie game, which games like Fortnite, Warzone or Apex Legends don’t offer. Or try chatting with a lead developer in Discord for these games? Or try to get direct feedback from the developers there about your game ideas? Or even get developer responses to your TikTok comments there? This close little community and the with each other, you can only find that with us!

So feel free to join the community in Discord and help shape the future of Regain Earth!!!

You can very well google for “Unreal Tutorials” or “Unity Tutorials” and you will find hundreds or thousands of good tutorials. I did exactly the same thing, by the way. So, find tutorials and learn with them. That’s really the best thing you can do. You can find most tutorials on YouTube.

Everything about game development I have taught myself completely. I watched hundreds of YouTube videos, read 5 or more books, worked through a lot of tutorials and tried out a lot of things. So really extremely much time invested to find a good entrance.

At Udemy you can also buy online courses. Epic Games offers for Unreal Engine also its own learning platform with online courses, which everyone can use for free. Mostly, though, I recommend simply googling for tutorials on the game engine you like to watch. Especially to Unity you can find endless tutorials on YouTube.

There are also game engines that are much simpler than Unreal Engine or Unity. These also have limited capabilities, but for your first game and/or if you don’t have any IT training, take a look at the following simpler game engines.

RPG Maker: https://www.rpgmakerweb.com Construct: https://www.scirra.com GameMaker Studio: http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker

An excellent overview of which engines are often used for indie games can be found here on Itch.io: https://itch.io/game-development/engines/most-projects

Itch.io is a great website where small studios (or small solo game developers) can publish their first projects well. The list just linked shows very well which game engines most of them use.