Three months into rebuilding a 25-year-old spy game in Unity, I made a series of indie game design mistakes that nearly destroyed the entire project. The game ran. The systems worked. But every single time someone played it, something felt deeply wrong and I could not name it. This is the story of what that mistake was, how we found it, and what the fix unlocked.
My name is Frank Salas. I run Salas Games, a remote indie studio rebuilding My Life as a Spy — a 2D multiplayer espionage RPG from 2001 — into a full 3D game for a new generation. This is Devlog 7.
The Indie Game Design Mistake I Made for Months
When you love a game for 25 years, you stop seeing it the way other people do. You see every detail, every system, every small choice the original developer made.
My instinct was to protect all of it.
The original My Life as a Spy ran on a top-down 2D camera. Every mechanic we built in the 3D version directly mirrored a game designed two decades ago, for different players, on technology that no longer limits us.
That was the indie game design mistake. Dragging a 2001 design into a 2026 engine and forcing it to feel right does not work. The game functioned on paper but felt wrong every single time we played it.
I Waited 25 Years to Make My Dream Spy Game
Building a Museum Instead of a Game
Every producer who loves their source material deeply risks this exact indie game design mistake — protecting the past instead of building the future.
I was not rebuilding My Life as a Spy. I was preserving it behind glass.
Every decision pointed back to the 2001 version instead of forward to what this game could become. The result was a functional tech demo that felt wrong to everyone who touched it.
The original game is untouchable. Nothing changes that. But this 3D version is not the original. It is built on its bones and its soul. That distinction took me months to accept.
Fixing the Indie Game Design Mistake — The Camera That Changed Everything
The fix came from one decision: the camera.
We moved it off the top-down angle and placed it behind the agent — a third-person hybrid that sits just over the shoulder and drops the player into the world instead of above it.
Streets felt like streets. Alleys felt like alleys. Turning a corner meant you genuinely could not see what waited on the other side.
Ten minutes after that camera went live, the full team locked the decision. Nobody debated it. Everyone felt the difference immediately.
That change fixed the indie game design mistake at the root. Walls blocked sightlines naturally. Buildings hid whatever sat behind them. The city became dangerous not because of a coded system, but because of how it looked and felt from inside it.
What Shipped After We Fixed the Indie Game Design Mistake
Once the team accepted this as a reimagined game rather than a preserved one, five major systems shipped inside a single week. All five existed in the original 2001 version. All five got modernized for 2026.
Aim Mode — Over-the-Shoulder
Hold right click and your agent pulls a pistol from inside their trench coat. The camera drops into a close, over-the-shoulder aim view.
This is where the spy fantasy lives in your hands. The game suddenly feels tight, intimate, and intentional.
Movement Penalty While Aiming
The moment the pistol comes out, movement slows. You cannot strafe and shoot like this is Halo or Fortnite.
Aiming is a commitment. Plant your feet or keep moving — pick one. That single mechanic stopped the game from feeling like a shooter and started it feeling like a spy making a deliberate choice.
Atmospheric Fog and Day/Night Cycle
The city now has a mood that shifts with time.
Dawn brings cold gray light. Midday opens everything up. Sunset drops a warm haze across the map. Night is the hero state — shadows everywhere, visibility tight, the city feels dangerous at every angle.
Stealth, Hiding, and Backstab Damage
Players can now hide inside dropboxes, dumpsters, and trash cans. Pop out behind an enemy and attack from behind, and the damage hits a multiplier.
The game rewards patience. Hide, wait, and ambush. That is how spies operate, and now the game pays you for playing that way.
Agency Security Defenses
Every headquarters now runs security systems inside its walls. Catch an enemy agent without their disguise — through combat, your Perception skill, or direct exposure — and the base fires colored electricity to defend the HQ.
Red electricity at the red base. Green at green. Black at black.
Before this system, walking into an enemy base carried no real risk. Now every infiltration requires a plan, the right disguise, and a working exit.
Why Indie Game Design Mistakes Often Come From Passion
Most indie game design mistakes online get blamed on bad planning or weak execution. This one came from caring too much.
Twenty-five years of love for a game will make you want to protect every part of it. That instinct is understandable. But honoring the original and building the best version of it are sometimes two completely different jobs.
The moment I stopped protecting the 2001 version and started building the 2026 version, every system snapped into place. This is a reimagined game, not a remake. It carries the DNA of the original but belongs to a new generation of players.
Recognizing that difference — and accepting it — is the core lesson inside every indie game design mistake that comes from loving your source material too deeply.
The Playtest That Confirmed Everything
Talk about indie game design mistakes all you want. The real test is what happens when people actually play.
At the end of this week’s internal playtest, one of my developers led me on a chase through the streets. He stayed just out of range, cut through alleys, and kept circling back near his base. What I could not see — because of the camera, because of the city we built — was that he had been laying traps along every street on that route the whole time.
He led me to his base and ran circles while I chased him into trap after trap. None of the traps alone finished me. But by the time he turned and shot, I had nothing left. I died, dropped documents, lost gear and training points.
And I was laughing out loud.
That was the moment. Not when a system shipped. Not when a new asset hit the build. The moment I forgot I was testing my own game and just played it — and got completely outplayed in a game I have known for 25 years.
He posted my hat pin in the team Slack channel afterward and talked trash. A hat pin is the trophy you earn when you kill another player. I spent the rest of that playtest going after him specifically.
That is the DNA of a spy game. That is what we are building. We discussed the completion of core loop in the other Devlog, check that out.
Cutting Fog of War — A Lesson in Knowing When to Stop
Fog of War had been a defining feature on the roadmap from day one. The plan was a dark, mysterious city where you could only see what your agent directly observed.
Then the camera changed everything.
With the new third-person view, the camera already does the job Fog of War was designed to do. Walls block sightlines. Buildings hide whatever sits behind them. Corners are genuinely dangerous because the corner itself blocks your view.
Adding Fog of War on top of all that would solve a problem the camera already solved. So we cut it — for now.
Knowing when to remove a feature is one of the hardest parts of avoiding indie game design mistakes. Not every good idea belongs in the game at the same time. Fog of War may come back. That decision belongs to the playtests.
If you have an opinion on whether it should return, join the Discord through the link in the video below. Your feedback shapes real decisions.
The City Is Starting to Feel Like a Place
Five 3D artists joined the team this week and the city reflects it.
Chinatown is finished — lanterns hang across the streets and the gate is up. The shopping district has storefronts and commercial signs that make it feel like the center of activity. Working-class blocks carry brick walls and fire escapes. The wealthy district runs an art deco style that communicates money without a single label.
Every district tells you where you are without text on screen. The city is starting to feel like a real place, not a level.
50 Players in the First Live Playtest
These devlogs always run a few weeks behind where the project actually stands.
Since this week closed, we held our first public playtest. Over 50 players from our Discord and other communities joined the server. The servers held. The systems ran. People played.
If you want an invite to the next playtest, join the Discord through the link in the video description. Discord members get early access every time.
Final Thought
The biggest indie game design mistake I made was treating the original game as something to copy rather than something to learn from.
The version I protected for months was a memory. A great memory. But still a memory.
The new version is the one where I die laughing in an alley because a developer I hired outplayed me in a game I designed. A game built on 25 years of proven mechanics but shaped for a generation that was not there in 2001.
That is the version worth building. Subscribe to follow every step of it.