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# One More Workbench: Playing Indie Dev Jenga
- URL: https://www.hashtagsurvival.net/one-more-workbench-playing-indie-dev-jenga/
- Published: 2025-09-16T12:41:14.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-28T11:37:12.000Z
- Description: Do side projects make it harder to finish what you started?
- Author: Jordan
- Tags: Ponderings, Gaming

I've been working with indie devs for over half a decade now, and I swear, watching them work is like watching someone play the world's most stressful game of Jenga. They've got dozens of role hats to juggle - developer, coder, marketing guru, PR person, customer service - on top of building the actual game.

Inventory system? That's a block. AI behaviors? Block! World building, story, gameplay loop, vehicle mechanics, combat systems - block after block after block. And the whole time they're probably thinking, "Just one more feature and this thing will be perfect."  
(Or, one more workbench!)

***Rooted*** is creeping its way through development, chugging through Alpha 2, I think. (I'm kinda eyeballing it, but since I can't share anything, meh.) They released [a small news blurb](https://rootedthegame.com/news/expanding-the-rooted-team-after-alpha-phase-2?utm%5Fcampaign=issue-2-tweaking-twerking&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=news.rollforsurvival.net) detailing how they onboarded to their development team, yadda yadda. Nestled in there, though, was an interesting piece of info: to fund the studio’s growth, they *“…launched a side project developed in just four months (a genuine challenge!) called *Backrooms: Extractions* on Steam.”*

A little further down the page, they mentioned *“Beyond its financial impact, this side project allows us to test features in a smaller-scale environment before introducing them to Rooted. We iterate rapidly, collect valuable player feedback, refine and enhance features, ensuring quality before implementing them into our primary project.”*

I’ve seen this crop up a ton lately, most recently with 3C Games- creator of the upcoming title ***WASTED Will Be Brutal,*** and who recently released a demo for another title, ***WASTED BLOODLINE***.

![](https://www.hashtagsurvival.net/content/files/2026/09/wasted.avif)

**As a player, it can look like a shiny distraction. But from the dev side? It could be a bunch of shit! (Some dumb, some not. Ish.)**

Maybe the old “eyes bigger than your stomach” problem, or maybe it's just straight-up scope creep (the classic “well, just one more system won’t hurt”) until it's a bloated mess of benches and features. Oooor maybe it’s our monkey brain! You see a game doing well and it has A THING and suddenly you’re like, *shit, we need A THING too, scrap the schedule.* (Old THING would probably be zombies, and lately it's like...trains.)

Or! Or! **Skill ceilings.** You bash your head against a roadblock, like AI combat, for six months, it won’t click, and instead of grinding through it, you say fuck it and pivot to a side project where you don’t need AI at all! And that's not always terrible: I'm sure that we could probably dig around and find amazing small scope games that only came about because the dev was taking a break from something more involved. Or too hard. And I'm not saying that it's not a useful way to learn the code/skillset in question, either. *(That makes sense, right? Becca is the UE5 brain in our pairing.)*

What else can it be, hmm.  
A quick cash infusion when you're drowning is possible, though the vast majority of Steam games make garbage in terms of profit, so this may be a hit or miss thing. If you already have folks invested in GAME A, it can torpedo shit to announce you're going to work on GAME B for **reasons.** Speaking of the game community, maybe it's just for quick thrills? Eventually, you get fucking tired of hearing ~~"are we there yet,"~~ "is it ready yet," and not only do you get to say "IT'S COMING OUT NOW" but you also get that big dick developer energy that comes after a release (that doesn't suck) where everyone flatters you in Discord and begs for keys.

I dunno. I guess the smart move (sometimes) is starting with a birdhouse and not a hand-carved chair. *(If you've read my shit at ALL over the past few years, you've definitely seen me plan for something BIG AND FANCY and then quietly downsize.)*

But man, it seems like most devs would rather die on the hill of their giant-ass project than admit they should’ve started smaller.