Successful indie games based on Unity?

I just tried Unity Free and got impressed by its advanced GUI. I have only some experience of making small 2D games, so I somewhat doubt whether an indie team can make high-quality 3D game. Before I invest time to climb the learning curve, I wanna see some evidences.

Do you know any awesome game developed by very small team(mine has only two member) with Unity?

 

Check out the gallery. Many of those titles are indi titles, some are commercial. You may have to visit the game's website to see what is a big company and what is a small project.

http://unity3d.com/gallery/made-with-unity/game-list

 

Some of those games that were successful started as 2 or 3 man teams. Read through some of the sites. many list dev blogs.

 

Impressed by the Unity GUI system?!?!?!?

 

Well I'm a 1 man team and created a game called TorpedoRun which is all in 3d, see here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/torpedorun/id457500717?mt=8
And I've been pleasantly surprised at how well it has sold. All done in Unity. The first release was a bit ropey and was with the free version of unity. After I'd made the 1st few thousand dollars I upgraded to pro just so I could get rid of the unity splash screen and replace it with my own. It just felt a bit amature to have the unity logo on it.

 

Rochard was developed in Unitiy and is (afaik) the only console game Unity has had so far.
There is also a very recently released Unity game on steam, it has something to do with coding/DNA, anyone got the title?

 

Wow, someone who actually likes Unity's GUI system. That's new.

Well, check out the Unity Awards 2012 list, there's some pretty cool stuff there: http://unity3d.com/awards/2012

 

Max and the Magic Marker is a Unity game on WiiWare.

 

There are others.

 

I assume you're talking about Transcripted : http://store.steampowered.com/app/215450/
Yes it's been released this week, it's done with Unity by a team of 3 persons.
Now will it be successful ? that's yet to be seen... fingers crossed eh ! ^^

 

There's http://deadfrontier.com/ the coding was mostly done by one guy.

 

Unity has had several games on consoles, but Rochard might be the most well known. The coding/DNA game could also be Splice: http://store.steampowered.com/app/209790/

 

I meant Transcripted - cool you just made me realise Splice is a Unity game too. I wonder what else?

Krobill, just wondering: In order to create the nice glow and color changes in Transcripted, what did you do? Is it conventionally imported models with Unity particle effects or did you do something different, like some specific use of sprites?
Very best of luck for the game, I very much hope you get positive reviews and lots of publicity

 

We certainly hope for that too!

The nice glow is just the post effect glow available in Unity Pro. If by color changes you mean the effect for the transition between vulnerable mode and invulnerable mode, that's a bit trickier : backgrounds just tween between 2 colors which are multiplied with the textures... Sprites switch from a 'standard' shader with bump, specular, and a few other stuff to a more complex one which does all the previous things and progressively replace them by a rimlight.

There are really a few 3D objects in the game, it's almost only sprites. Imported 3D objects were only used to create quad grids for bosses and such which are skinned or deformed with a vertex shader. I think the only 'real' 3D object in the game is the final boss core ^^

 

ROFL, if the GUI impressed you, you ain't seen nothing yet..

 

frogger hyper arcade edition on PS3 was made with Unity.

 

@Krobill: Thanks for your answer. Looks like some very good 2d artists were at work. If I may ask, how many people developed Transcripted and how many of them were programmers vs. how many artists?

@derkoi: Ahh - I also just discovered Escape Plan for Vita is Unity too. Though I don't know if that's indie...

 

Pretty sure he is talking about the editor GUI.

 

Transcripted for the most part was done by 3 guys. Musics and voice recordings were the only things not done by us.
My associate Mickael is lead developer, he handled all the core programming and tool development. I'm the lead artist, lead game designer and I took charge of most of the level/AI scripting. Christophe arrived roughly half way through and took charge of nearly all the graphical production during the last months of development including in-game assets and all videos (tooltips, cutscenes, etc...). He also shared a sizeable part of the level design.

 

battleheart...

 

I am guessing he meant the editor's GUI itself, not the GUI API. The Unity editor's UI is pretty awesome. Unity's GUI API... not so much Luckily, we have NGUI.

 

And his other games.

 

My crazy family team consisting of my wife, myself and as many of my daughters I can muster use Unity and our game is currently #3 on the Aussie charts.

 

Dude thats awesome, whole family working on one project.

 

Great job Starky! I wondered if I was the only family doing that. My wife does the 2D art, I program, and we build the content together. Builds a stronger marriage.

Gigi.

 

Wish my other half did 2d/3d art. Instead she cooks and bakes and I get fatter and fatter! lol

 

Nom noms!

 

If a marriage can survive indie games development, it can survive anything!

 

LOL. I heard pregnancy was actually the toughest.

 

Thanks for all these cases. It's really cool to make games with whole family.

And yes, I was talking about Unity's Editor GUI, not its GUI API. In fact, after a week, I haven't understand how to build GUI in Unity yet!

 

I think never a truer word was said. It didn't work out for me so I can appreciate it working out for you btw if nobody minds: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/06/the-family-that-built-a-video-game-together/

Really cool article about the chap with the hat above!