Indie & Dev World

This is from the 2026 campus recruitment talk when miHoYo combat designer 鸡哥 (Jige - Aquaria) went to Tsinghua University to give a special talk on game design.

Watch the full video for the full presentation, below is just a small summary.
(Props to SentientBamboo for getting translations for a 24min video out so quickly)

Eng Translation: https://youtu.be/SHwHdM3nKPI (by SentientBamboo)

Official Upload: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Td9TBqEqD

What does a game designer actually do?

• Game design is not just about ideas or loving games
• It is a product role that balances player experience, creativity, teamwork, and business reality
• Designers help build games that can actually succeed and last long term
• One of miHoYo's company values: "Rather than creating a commodity, we want to create a work with meaning"
• With commercial games, it's made as a live service product where they need players to have fun
• As for indie games, it's made for yourself - these are made with the creators hopes that other people will also like their work.
• The indie game concept is a principle miHoYo has always tried to express - to make games with heart and have have players like the game itself and resonate with them.

Soft Qualities

• Example based on FGO: "A knight does not die fighting empty handed". It means an expert is never hopeless without their main tool.
• It represents that a good designer is not limited to one background or major. Even if someone did not study game design directly, they can still bring valuable knowledge into the field.
• The body of knowledge involved in games can come from very different disciplines. One example he gives is him, 10yrs ago, used mathematical modeling and simulation via MATLAB to analyze and distribute loot in WoW accordingly, based on their theoretical DPS values and current gear + skills, showing that even technical or academic knowledge can become useful in design work.
• The job of a designer is not just to come up with ideas, but to help create something solid enough to survive and grow
• Think about game design as part of their bigger life and career planning, not just as a dream job based on fandom.
• A philosophical principle called "Stevens' Power Law" was used for their UI design concepts too. It can calculate the annoyance from one specific UI decision and find optimal UI design. Hiding UI is never good as it will build annoyance from players which is why multiple menus within each other is also never good.
• More about Church of Favonius design decisions, how Aquaria's Electrical Engineering skills also helped, basically all paths or fields can mold you into a game designer, each with their own unique qualities that are useful.

Hard Skills

• Strong fundamentals matter way more than glamour.
• Gives an example from Baki's Retsu Kaioh - Learn the Basics first!
• One of the biggest examples is design document writing. A design doc is not supposed to be a fun story or a place to show off imagination.
• Its purpose is to communicate clearly with teammates, especially programmers and other implementers. If the document is vague or is missing concrete detail, then it fails at its job.
• This is why miHoYo has their "Mini Project" Competition for new young hires. A ~6 week project, akin to a Game Jam to build their basics in all sorts of necessary skills.
• The essence of this Mini Project, is that the teams need to encounter issues, either from lack of skill, team disputes or even timeline constraints. "Blood needs to flow like a river"
• If a team did everything smoothly and happily completed the game within the 6 weeks, then the 6 weeks would've potentially been wasted.
• Coordinating interests, getting a satisfactory outcome, exposing problems, mistakes, and weaknesses. All this friction and failure are useful because they show people what they still need to learn, which is what Hard Skills are.
• You need to know these skills exist in a team, especially for a company and only then can you level those skills up.

Level up together with the Masters

• Never be afraid to ask questions. There will only be 2 outcomes at miHoYo when you do: Either the senior has some time and will answer your questions, or the senior is busy and will politely decline while telling you who might be able to answer.
• You can even ask Dawei questions.
• School and Company life is extremely different. No more quantified and explict learning goals, how far you can grow in a company entirely depend on yourself.
• All the resources and knowledge is available but there won't be a strict push to learn. Self-motivation is absolutely needed.
• If you're interested in something then do it! Even if no one else on the team knows about a specific thing, it doesn't prevent you from learning something new.
• An example he gave is a Tsinghua student in 2023 once decided to build a dynamically updating API document within miHoYo which would be able to explain all the scripts and process within the company in a simplified format. Especially so those QA, designers, and non-programmers could understand the implementation logic of the games.
• You need to be proactive.

Haven't played as much games as the Designers?

• This does not mean the designers are pro gamers and have played many more hours of games compared to others.
• He's talking about your Exposure to games and how deeply you understand the games you've played from a design perspective.
• Aquaria has played over 2700hrs of PUBG, but instead of him becoming a pro at shooting game design, it made him lose exposure since PUBG is not the only shooter genre out there. Instead of using only a single sample for game design inspiration, you need more.
• Goes to talk a ton about the Genshin Element Reaction system design reasoning.

Q&A

On game forums we often see players fiercely criticizing designers, does being a designer require strong mental resilience?

• Yes
• Do not treat every opinion as an attack or as negative pressure.
• You need to have the mindset to distinguish between what is worth understanding and what is unrelated.

How does miHoYo's character design process work from nothing to something?

• No fixed template - usually uses a council style where the representatives from the art, narrative and design department in the games plan for the upcoming content for a project.
• For vast majority of cases, like Genshin, people sometimes pitch in fragments of their ideas and only with the right context can they be assembled to form a final proposal

Main takeaway

• You do not need to be a “pro gamer” to become a designer
• What matters more is how the process in which you are able to solve problems
• Passion helps, but execution and growth matter just as much.

Hi indie games fans!

I'm the solo developer of Lost & Found,  is an adventure-mystery game where you return townsfolk’s lost belongings & uncover personal stories behind each item. It features a hybrid animation style that blends 2D, 3D, pixel art, & more. Gather clues, investigate locals, & ensure every lost belonging ends up in the right hands.

And yes...The visuals are inspired by The Amazing World of Gumball :D

Support the development of the game by Wishlisting it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4466940/Lost__Found/

What started as an environment art project turned out to be one of the biggest projects I've ever done. Today, almost 3 years later I'm close to actually releasing this project. With some up and downs I managed to turn my crazy idea to make an open-world game into a real project. What a journey so far! To this date, I've released the demo, reached more then 4000+ Wishlist's and started a community of dedicated players. Some players even with more then 30 hours already in a demo I plannend for 30 minutes of gameplay! Here is a small clip of how an area looked like 3 years ago and today.

Hi everyone! Our Steam page just went live today!

I’m making a game called Adopt Me Please. The game is a blend of psychological horror, checking mechanics (inspired by Papers, Please) and a cozy-looking animal shelter that’s actually a nightmare in disguise.

Your job is to vet the strays and match them with the right adopters. But you have to be aware of the Mimics. These things have learned to disguise as the creatures we love. They are waiting to get inside. Don't let them in!!

Here is our steam capsule and screenshots, would love your honest feedback!!

First impression? What kind of gameplay or mechanics would you expect from the above screenshots? What kind of experience do you want in this game?

Let me know what you think!

Hi everyone! I’m working on my first project as a solo dev, a narrative horror game called Witchlight Woods. 

It’s part visual novel, part choose-your-own-adventure, and started as a game jam project for the Spooktober 2024. It’s about embarking on a journey through the woods while being hunted by the witch you were tasked with imprisoning.

Right now I'm working on a prologue-type demo, a self-contained story in the same universe.  

The red lines are the linetrace trajectory
Hopefully it would fix the missing trace when the framerate drops.
I purposedly limit the framerate to 20 fps here

Recently I finished the core mesh architecture. It is an attribute driven model of a point / vertex / primitive inspired by Houdini architecture and implemented in Unity.

My prev post about it

And as the next step, I added plane based mesh slicing on top of it. The mesh splits into separate parts while preserving topology and attributes (normals, colors, etc.), without holes or artifacts.

It preserves mesh manifoldness and connectivity (this can be seen by the same numbers on shared vertices at the cut contour)

I think I’ll try to implement booleans next

Concept by Kieran Daysh
Model/Animation by Niclas Halvarsson

An enemy bot our team made that I think is awesome.

What does a game designer actually do?

• Game design is not just about ideas or loving games
• It is a product role that balances player experience, creativity, teamwork, and business reality
• Designers help build games that can actually succeed and last long term
• One of miHoYo's company values: "Rather than creating a commodity, we want to create a work with meaning"
• With commercial games, it's made as a live service product where they need players to have fun
• As for indie games, it's made for yourself - these are made with the creators hopes that other people will also like their work.
• The indie game concept is a principle miHoYo has always tried to express - to make games with heart and have have players like the game itself and resonate with them.

Soft Qualities

• Example based on FGO: "A knight does not die fighting empty handed". It means an expert is never hopeless without their main tool.
• It represents that a good designer is not limited to one background or major. Even if someone did not study game design directly, they can still bring valuable knowledge into the field.
• The body of knowledge involved in games can come from very different disciplines. One example he gives is him, 10yrs ago, used mathematical modeling and simulation via MATLAB to analyze and distribute loot WoW accordingly, based on their theoretical DPS values and current gear + skills, showing that even technical or academic knowledge can become useful in design work.
• The job of a designer is not just to come up with ideas, but to help create something solid enough to survive and grow
• Think about game design as part of their bigger life and career planning, not just as a dream job based on fandom.
• A philosophical principle called "Stevens' power Law" was used for their UI design concepts too. It can calculate the annoyance from one specific UI decision and find optimal UI design. Hiding UI is never good as it will build annoyance from players which is why multiple menus within each other is also never good.
• He explains more about the Church of Favonius design decisions and how Aquaria's Electrical Engineering skills also helped. Basically all paths or fields can mold you into a game designer, each giving you your own unique qualities that are useful in design.

Hard Skills

• Strong fundamentals matter way more than glamour.
• Gives an example from Baki's Retsu Kaioh - Learn the Basics first!
• One of the biggest examples is design document writing. A design doc is not supposed to be a fun story or a place to show off imagination.
• Its purpose is to communicate clearly with teammates, especially programmers and other implementers. If the document is vague or is missing concrete detail, then it fails at its job.
• This is why miHoYo has their "Mini Project" Competition for new young hires. A ~6 week project, akin to a Game Jam to build their basics in all sorts of necessary skills.
• The essence of this Mini Project, is that the teams need to encounter issues, either from lack of skill, team disputes or even timeline constraints. "Blood needs to flow like a river"
• If a team did everything smoothly and happily completed the game within the 6 weeks, then the 6 weeks would've potentially been wasted.
• Coordinating interests, getting a satisfactory outcome, exposing problems, mistakes, and weaknesses. All this friction and failure are useful because they show people what they still need to learn, which is what Hard Skills are.
• You need to know these skills exist in a team, especially for a company and only then can you level those skills up.

Level up together with the Masters

• Never be afraid to ask questions. There will only be 2 outcomes at miHoYo when you do: Either the senior has some time and will answer your questions, or the senior is busy and will politely decline while telling you who might be able to answer.
• School and Company life is extremely different. No more quantified and explict learning goals, how far you can grow in a company entirely depend on yourself.
• All the resources and knowledge is available but there won't be a strict push to learn. Self-motivation is absolutely needed.
• If you're interested in something then do it! Even if no one else on the team knows about a specific thing, it doesn't prevent you from learning something new.
• An example he gave is a Tsinghua student in 2023 once decided to build a dynamically updating API document within miHoYo which would be able to explain all the scripts and process within the company in a simplified format. Especially so those QA, designers, and non-programmers could understand the implementation logic of the games.
• You need to be proactive.

Haven't played as much games as the Designers?

• This does not mean the designers are pro gamers and have played many more hours of games compared to others.
• He's talking about your Exposure to games and how deeply you understand the games you've played from a design perspective.
• Aquaria has played over 2700hrs of PUBG, but instead of him becoming a pro at shooting game design, it made him lose exposure since PUBG is not the only shooter genre out there. Instead of using only a single sample for game design inspiration, you need to learn more about other shooting subgenres.
• Goes to talk a ton about the Genshin Element Reaction system design reasoning as it is an extremely unique system basically not found in any other game.

Q&A

On game forums we often see players fiercely criticizing designers, does being a designer require strong mental resilience?

• Yes
• Do not treat every opinion as an attack or as negative pressure.
• You need to have the mindset to distinguish between what is worth understanding and what is unrelated.

How does miHoYo's character design process work from nothing to something?

• No fixed template - usually uses a council style where the representatives from the art, narrative and design department in the games plan for the upcoming content for a project.
• For vast majority of cases, like Genshin, people sometimes pitch in fragments of their ideas and only with the right context and plan can they be assembled to form a final proposal to be made.

Main takeaway

• You do not need to be a “pro gamer” to become a designer
• What matters more is how the process in which you are able to solve problems
• Passion helps, but execution and growth matter just as much.

This is from the 2026 campus recruitment talk when miHoYo combat designer 鸡哥 (Jige - Aquaria) went to Tsinghua University to give a special talk on game design.

Watch the video for the full presentation, above is just a small summary.

Eng Translation: https://youtu.be/SHwHdM3nKPI (by SentientBamboo)

Official Upload: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Td9TBqEqD

We've been working a bit on some cool features for our Looter Shooter Multiplayer FPS Game and we wanted to showcase them, let us know what you think

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a dark fantasy action game in Unity called Runeborne Arena.

I just made a new teaser and I’d really appreciate some feedback especially from a dev perspective.

Main things I’m unsure about:

does the combat read clearly?

is the pacing too fast or too slow?

is the core mechanic understandable from the teaser?

Still early in development, so any honest feedback helps a lot.