I love this game, how did you guys do it.

[SerKibbler]

It's been my dream for a long time to make video games, but i've been having trouble finding a starting point. This may not be the easiest, but hell, modding dragon's dogma without any prior modding experience wasn't easy either. I know for me personally that i'll be better at something that i'm driven to do and motivated to learn, rather than just something that's simply easy for beginners. I'm speaking from experience on this, so trust me.

With that out of the way, my main goal is to at least get some directions to be pushed into. I don't need to know everything about how this game was made, as i'm sure i wouldn't understand it yet. I guess what i'm looking for is like, what were some of the major steps you took and obstacles you had to overcome in making this game? For example: how you decided on the engine, in what ways said engine benefited you, how you went about sound design, level design, any general game mechanics that gave you trouble or things that maybe i should look out for when making a game like this. Any preemptive financial advice would be welcome as well.

I'm sure you could tell by my intentions and less than proffesional delivery, but i'm not a journalist. We can discuss any feedback you have on this post in DMs if you'd rather it be a private discussion, or you can tell me to go ask someone else for game making advice. I'm sure you have another episode to work on anyways. :^)

[MuscularMelvin]

You'll probably find better answers for these questions over at the New Blood Discord. David Szymanski has mentioned some of his design philosophies in the past on there and Leon and Simmo have, too IIRC.

Unity and UE4 are good starting points. Unity has a lot of tutorials that anyone can learn (hence all the Greenlight crap that used to flood Steam) and UE4 has incredible optimization for how good its graphics can look.

Connections are also important. The whole reason Dusk was made in the first place was because David Szymanski knew Dave Oshry from the Interceptor forums for Rise of the Triad 2013 and sent him an e-mail.

[Leon]

Well... although this is our first game as a company, it's not our first working together. We've been modding games since we were kids, and have worked on Rise of the Triad (2013), Bombshell, Rad Rodgers.

Those 3 games used all used Unreal Engine, so it was the most logical choice due to the amount of features, cost, and a workflow we're most familiar with.

Amid Evil is extremely unusual as we don't have a lot of actual game design documentation compared with previous projects. We're a very small team so we instead prototype and discuss ideas in realtime. This particular workflow is extremely fast for us.

The project overall has been going well, but I put that down to experience we've learned a lot of 'what not to do' along the way.

Sound design was between me and Andrew. We both have interest in sound design and music so, I dunno, we just use our ears.

Level design is one of the hardest jobs in game dev, since it requires a lot of skills. You have to know everything about the game design you're working on, and programming, art, layouts, architecture, 3d space, lighting, sound, etc etc then you gotta put it all together

Financial advice... make sure you have more money than you need :P things always take longer than you think.

To be a game dev... it takes a lot of work. A lot more than people think. Been doing this for 5 years as a job. It takes up most of my time, haven't made any money but I keep trying.

So if that doesn't put you off, the best advice I've heard is simply 'get started'. Like just start following tutorials, making stuff, you'll learn along the way.
The dude who made stardew valley made the entire game by himself on a tiny dell PC with no prior experience[gamasutra.com]. So anything's possible.