Agenda

Join Jase Lindgren and Tom Guillermin, Co-founder and CTO of Sandfall Interactive, for an inside look at how a small indie team turned a passion project into a fully funded AAA-quality game. What began in 2019 with a single developer grew into a full 30-person studio—overcoming funding hurdles, expanding their tech stack, and building processes to stay organized along the way.

In this lively discussion, Tom will share lessons, missteps, and breakthroughs that shaped their journey – from the initial prototypes to a vertical slice, onto signing with Kepler Interactive in 2021 and scaling up to a full team with dedicated animators, artists, and QA engineers.

Stories like this are why we created In Development, Perforce Software's podcast spotlighting the technical minds behind today's most ambitious projects – from game development pipelines at CD PROJEKT RED to animation workflows at Nickelodeon. For our season two premiere, we'll be recording this conversation live at GDC 2026.

Takeaway

Attendees will walk away with a real picture of what it looks like to build a game targeting a high production value as an indie, and learn how Sandfall navigated the challenges of building a studio from the ground up and secured funding without compromising their initial creative vision.

Intended Audience

This talk is for industry veterans, indie developers, and anyone curious about the realities of creating a high-production-value game.