Independent studios have always been the driving force behind the most daring ideas in the gaming industry. They are the ones who most often launch the games that suddenly explode on the Internet: absurd pigeon simulators, 18+ plant seller simulators, and games about geese that harm their neighbors. And the stealth horror Five Nights at Freddy’s eventually grew into a global phenomenon and reached a full-fledged film adaptation.
Landing a spot on one of these teams means working at the creative forefront, where each person genuinely shapes the final product.
The hiring process at indie studios looks nothing like the big company experience. There are no multi-level interviews with HR departments the size of a small town. Instead, you get direct contact with founders and the people who’ll be making games right alongside you. Many studios readily hire specialized game developers remotely, and some even offer outstaffing to expand teams for specific projects. Understanding how these teams operate can be your ticket into a world where ideas turn into games in months, not years.
What Indie Studios Actually Need
Large corporations often have the luxury of keeping skilled specialists on standby, even when there’s no immediate work for them. Independent studios don’t work that way. They usually hire game developer talent only at the moment when a very specific skill becomes essential. Sometimes that means working with a single freelancer found on Upwork. In other cases, it’s more practical to partner with a well-known development studio.
The biggest mistake candidates make is thinking indie studios are waiting for “the ideas person.” The founders usually started their company precisely to bring their own ideas to life. They have enough concepts to last the next decade. What they need are people who can actually build these ideas, not just discuss them over coffee.
Take Supergiant Games — the creators of Bastion and Transistor. When they hired composer Darren Korb, they didn’t just need a musician. Korb became part of the development process, creating sound effects and voicing characters. In a small team, everyone handles three or four roles simultaneously.
Portfolio Beats Resume Every Time
Your portfolio isn’t just a collection of work. It’s proof that you actually make games, not just dream about them. Studios want to see finished projects. Even if it’s a small game made at a Game Jam in 48 hours, and it works, and people can download it from itch.io — that’s better than an ambitious idea that stayed in Notion forever.
For programmers, this means code on GitHub. Create a repository with clean, documented code. Artists need to show the creation process, not just final results. Put concepts on ArtStation, breakdowns of modeling stages, and texture maps. Studios want to understand your workflow. If you’ve worked with Blender, Maya, or ZBrush, show it. Experience with different styles is especially valued — from pixel art to realistic rendering.
For composers, SoundCloud or Bandcamp are must-haves. But it’s better if the music was written specifically for games. Show how your track adapts to different scenes — combat, exploration, tension.
Communication Makes or Breaks Remote Work
Most indie studios work remotely. When a designer describes a mechanic in a document, the programmer should understand it without three hours of Zoom explanations. If an artist requests feedback, they need concrete answers, not vague “something’s off.”
Reliability is part of communication, too. If you said you’d deliver an animation tomorrow, there better be an animation tomorrow. Indie teams are small, and one person’s delay blocks everyone else’s work. Studio MDHR, which made Cuphead, worked for years in tight coordination — the brothers drew animations, and the composer adjusted music to level tempo.
Why “I’ll Work for Free” Is the Worst Pitch
Many beginners offer to work for free, hoping to gain experience. This is a bad strategy for both sides. Developers know: someone who isn’t getting paid will likely disappear when the hardest part of the project arrives — polishing, fixing bugs, and optimization.
Games aren’t built on enthusiasm alone. Enthusiasm helps for the first month when everything is new and exciting. By the fourth month, when you need to rework the inventory interface for the fifth time or fix the tenth crash on level load, salary is what motivates people to push the project to completion.
If a studio is serious, it’ll find ways to pay its people. Maybe it’s a small rate, maybe revenue share after release, but some form of compensation will exist.
The exception might be a very short test period — one or two months of internship with hiring prospects. This needs to be clearly outlined: duration, tasks, and success criteria. Otherwise, it’s exploitation.
Programmers and Artists Form the Foundation
If you’re looking for the most in-demand position in indie, it’s always programmers and artists. You can’t make a game without code and visuals. Everything else — sound, narrative, level design — matters, but often someone on the core team handles these functions on top of their main duties.
Unreal demands knowledge of Blueprint and C++, understanding the reflection system, and working with materials. If you’re making mobile games, optimization across different platforms is critical — Android requires testing on dozens of different devices.
For artists, a technical approach matters. Models need to be not just beautiful, but optimized. Understanding topology, UV unwrapping, proper use of normal maps, PBR texturing — that’s standard. In 2D indie games, classic frame-by-frame animation is often required, which demands understanding Disney animation principles — squash and stretch, anticipation, and follow-through.
Interview Preparation That Actually Works
First impressions come from your cover letter, not your resume. This should be a personal letter, not a template. Tell them why this specific studio interests you. Maybe you love their previous game and know every mechanic by heart. Maybe their art style or approach to narrative impresses you. Specifics work better than generic phrases.
Research the studio. Visit their site, read their blog, and watch founder interviews. If they wrote postmortems of their projects, that’s a goldmine of information. From the Celeste postmortem, you can learn how a small team solved difficulty level problems and made one of the decade’s best platformers.
Be ready for a test assignment. Programmers might get a small mechanic to implement. Artists — create a concept from a brief. Designers — propose a solution to a specific problem in balance or level flow. Execute it well and on time. This is the only way to prove you can be trusted with real work.
Specialization Still Matters
The smaller the studio, the more functions each person performs. But this doesn’t mean you should be mediocre at everything. Better to be an expert in one area and have basic skills in adjacent ones. If you’re a UI/UX designer who understands programming basics and can implement interfaces in Unity yourself, you’re worth your weight in gold.
A technical artist is an especially valuable role. This is someone who sits at the boundary between code and art. They create shaders, set up lighting, build procedural generation systems, and write tools for artists. If you know both Maya and Python and understand Shader Graph in Unity, the demand for you is huge.
Game designers have specializations, too. Some focus on progression systems, others on combat balance, others on narrative structures. Team Cherry, creators of Hollow Knight, had a designer specialized in metroidvanias who understood how to properly place ability gates and create exploration without direct quest markers.
QA in small teams isn’t just finding bugs. A good QA specialist understands technical details, can reproduce issues, and write detailed reports that programmers can use for fixes. Ideally, you understand scripting basics for test automation.
Alternative Paths Into the Industry
No experience? Create it yourself. Game jams are where half of indie developers are born. Ludum Dare, Global Game Jam, and GMTK Game Jam happen several times a year. In 48 hours, you go through the entire development cycle — from idea to release. Even if the game comes out rough, it’s an experience working under stress and deadlines.
Modifying existing games is another path. Many developers started with mods. Counter-Strike began as a Half-Life mod. Dota 2 grew from a Warcraft III mod. Create content for Skyrim, Minecraft, and Terraria. If thousands of people download your mod, that’s a stronger argument than any resume.
Open source projects are valued, too. Contribute to Godot Engine, help with documentation, and fix bugs. This shows the ability to work in a team and understand other people’s code. Many indie studios use open source tools themselves and respect contributors.
Freelancing is a way to gain commercial experience. Upwork and Fiverr have hundreds of orders for game assets. Start simple — UI icons, 2D sprites, basic 3D models. Each completed order is a review, rating, and real money. After a year of this work, you’ll have both a portfolio and an understanding of how to work with clients.
Final Advice
Start small. Don’t wait for an invitation from the creators of Stardew Valley or Undertale. Look for studios actively developing projects and posting job openings. Check their site, social media, and GameDev.jobs, Remote Game Jobs.
Build a network. Attend local GameDev meetups, participate in online communities. Discord servers of many indie studios are open, and you can communicate with developers directly. Twitter/X is where half the indie scene shares development progress. Be active, comment, and help others.
Don’t give up after rejections. Even talented people get dozens of rejections before the first offer. Each rejection is an experience. Ask for feedback if possible. Use this for growth.
Most importantly — create. Download Unity or Godot and start. Your first game will be terrible. The fifth will be mediocre. The tenth might be the one that gets you noticed.
The independent game industry is a place where talent and persistence matter more than a degree from a prestigious university.
