Adam Kugler had a good career that was doing triple and playing for Blizzard Entertainment, working in the 12 -year stint of art and design jobs that culminated in work as an associated gaming director.
But then he left society to devote himself to his own dream: a deeply personal way to create the game as the founder of the Cyan Avatar Avatar Studies. And now it’s still, fantasy puzzle game where Alchemy meets logistics. PC is in Alpha testing and is available for a list of wishes on Steam.
MoteMancer is a beautiful game, invited and produced by Kugler, who has left his dream work in a triple game company to devote himself to his passion. The task of players is to automate in a sustainable natural ecosystem across six elementary planes using magical structures on an extraterrestrial planet. It is about restoring life. Kugler spoke of his shift from Triple-A to Solo Dev in round at our Gamebeat Summit 2025 event.
Mote dust
The title itself is directed by Carl Sagan, creator of Cosmos. Sagan had a famous quote that Earth was a “light blue dot” and that the planet was like a moti of dust suspended in the sun’s ray.
Players must use alchemical ingredients and spells to create an elegant system on a 2D hex grid. Six aircraft are like six different planets, but all are placed together as alternative dimensions in the same space. You can exchange between real -time aircraft.
“On the way, I have always inspired me independent games because you have food that feeds you like you, how you create things,” Kugler said. “So it’s my step to India as my love letter to a space that inspired me so much.”
Each aircraft has its unique set of resources and tools. Players solve logistics puzzles on a hex grid, where beauty, elegance and efficiency are naturally found. Players must discover magic, aspects and magical structures through an alchemical experience. And it must prevent their natural network against entropy, a creeping opponent who disrupts your designs. The goal is to restore the hand portal of the game. In each aircraft, the player must access different tools.
“I come from a system of system design, so one of the things I wanted, has each individual aircraft, has its own set of tools,” Kugler said. “I really like the games Sandbox, where players have their owls and their own way to solve the problem that creams for Thesselcraft, Factorio and Iso-Sphere.”
The title has no similarity to the work Kugler did in Blizzard, including World of Warcraft Multiplayer Online Role, which had a large development team.
As you can say from a quick view of the trailer, the MoteMancer is a beautiful game that looks as if it was built by a much larger team. Kugler harmed this game and built it alone, with the help of friendly developers. In June, he shoots at the demo release until June for the next Steam Next Fest and Automation Fest in July.
Solo
Kugler is not alone when he turns his back on the triple-a and goes on a solo road. Some popular independent games that mostly created by one person included Billy Basso’s Animal Well (a great hit in 2024, which was made over seven years); Balatro, who created an anonymous development of Localthunk; Octogeddon George Fan (made by two people); Potions, made over ten years from Rene Gittins and a small team.
Motoviti had several devils and a small team that the world on Elroy and aliens for 11 years. And Stardew Valley, who sold more than 41 million copies, was created by Eric Barone. Jonathan Blow is also known for doing games as a solo nine on titles like Braid and The Wident.
The race, as with many hit solo games, gets a lot of help. There are categories in which he tapped freelance contributors to help. But the vision was his. He considers this to be a “love letter to the genre” of fantasy automation, which gives up from traditional industrial complex games.
One friend helps optimize the game. Other innovations focused. The artist helped do conceptual work. But Kugler made about 80% of the game and probably 95% coding.
Alexandria Makova composed music for the game on the basis of a contract. Music is more intense to deal with problems such as meteors, tornadoes and other disasters.
“It’s not a request to be a big factory. It’s more about logistics puzzles,” he said.
Gaming mechanics and elementary interaction
Kugler said the gaming mechanics use the use of power plants, root systems and alchemical elements. The game allows players to visit different aircraft, each with its own set of elements and instruments, and create a dynamic and connected world. The aircraft create challenges where you cannot place certain buildings in some aircraft. And the constant enemy is entropy – the notion that natural forces tend to disorder – which reaches from the foundation of the player.
On one level. You use sun leaves to suck energy from the sun, but you can’t do it in a shadow plane. The research tree included air, water, life, earth, fire and shadow. Each has a different kind to drive creations.
“There is an enemy in the game, but it’s a much more relaxed enemy because it’s entropy. This is this black and white cloud that I can actually show,” he said.
There are very strong combinations of elements. For example, life and water can grow corals, which is just a slow growth process. If you play land and fire, there are rivers of self -government that will move objects without having to use strength. Shadow and Fire has a combination that allows you to perform wireless performance, so you can broadcast it across very different areas.
“I hope players can find super power pieces that talk most with them and then choose them as their hand bases,” he said.
Find the time
Kugler spent about 2.5 years development and began first as a side project when he was in Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard had an official program for secondary projects.
“I love automation and I probably have thousands of hours in automation games at this point, in many different games,” he said.
Kugler was trained as an artist and used the Unity game machine for the game. In order to carry out the project, he had to learn coding. He used Chatgpt for brainstorming and used Trello to track tasks.
Finally, Kugler has a passion for inspiration for the next generation of creators to create their dream games. The game also has an environmental sustainability report, while Marie games in the automation space included giant industrial complexes that plundered the environment. Kugler begins to work with the creators who can help advertise the game.
One simple solo thing is that he didn’t have to create a design document to explain the game of 300 people. When someone came to help, they would have too much for them for a while.
“Since he worked in Triple-A, how super inspired teams of one to five people,” he said. “Many times I wake up and feel like,” Here’s what the game needs to do, today. “”
He admires games such as Valheim, Return of Giant DIN and more.
“It is used sparingly, I think AI tools are super powerful, but I think they are more of a workflow than as a means to an end,” Kugler said.
As far as the ecological topic is concerned, Kugler said: “There are games concerning the revitalization of things. This is very tilted in this direction.