The Master’s Pupil is a hand-painted puzzle-adventure story set in the eye of 19th-century impressionist painter Claude Monet.
A unique and surreal biographical adventure, Noble Steed Games was privileged enough to help Pat port this beautiful game onto the Nintendo Switch, Playstation 5 and Xbox. Alongside rigorous QA testing, we’re glad to have helped make this game available for more people to play.
Speaking to Pat 2 years after launch, we decided to look back on how we worked together, how stuff went, and what we’ve learnt since.
Client details:
Pat Naoum
Solo Developer of The Master’s Pupil
Website: www.themasterspupil.com
The need for expertise
The Master’s Pupil is Pat’s first professionally published game title. As a solo developer, he needed support and expertise to port the game to other platforms. This included sourcing quotes for grant applications, such as the Screen Australia Games Production Fund Grant Pat was in the process of applying for in 2022. As a game studio based in Sydney, Australia, we fit Pat’s needs perfectly, being able to help with porting, QA and much more. Upon successfully receiving the grant, we began to work together in earnest!
Choosing who to work with
Beyond the above reasons for working with us, not many other studios in Australia offered what Noble Steed Games does, with many being publishers wanting to hash out publishing deals instead. In addition, Pat mentioned sourcing freelancers for help felt risky, especially when porting required things like dev kits, experience in the area, and current knowledge about the process. Hiring someone as an employee also meant relying on someone for tasks he wasn’t familiar with, alongside managing them. With Noble Steed, he gained clarity on how much things would cost, how long it would take, and what the process of getting The Master’s Pupil onto consoles was. Working with Noble Steed meant he could be confident that we’d handle project management, quality assurance and development work- the full suite!
“[Porting to consoles] feels like a very large job for one dude to jump on. I could pull off hiring someone as my employee to do this, […], but I don’t know what needs to be done. So getting a whole team that knows development for consoles, whilst also offering project management and QA testing felt like a full suite, and much less risky.”
– Pat
The case for porting
It’s known that publishing on multiple platforms is one of the best ways to reach more people with your game. In addition to greater potential sales, Pat wanted to establish himself as a game developer within the industry with a history to back it up. Being able to confidently show that The Master’s Pupil was on all major platforms was a great boon for future opportunities.
“Something I tried to do for all of the marketing for The Master’s Pupil was to try and promote myself as a game maker. If I could get some hype about my first little indie game, publish it onto multiple platforms, win awards and stuff- it’s great for the game, sure, but it’s also great for me. I can go off and pitch the new game with this evidence of my past efforts.”
– Pat
Going above and beyond
For clarity, The Master’s Pupil was originally slated to only be ported to the Nintendo Switch. A year after its initial release, Pat spoke to us about potentially working together to get it onto more platforms. During this period, there was an extremely honest discussion about the financial viability of doing so, and how it likely wouldn’t be for Noble Steed to take on the role of a publisher and fund the job. To illustrate:
“[Porting to PS5 and Xbox] was very much Reuben going ‘I don’t think it’s going to get our money back, but let’s just try it anyway.’ It was a straightforward and honest conversation that doing this wasn’t for financial reasons. [He said] the game is cool, everyone would learn from this process, making it worthwhile doing.”
– Pat
Noble Steed is a games consultancy, but it is also an indie games studio at its core. This means having an interest in investing in games we want to see thrive and the flexibility to do more for others if we wish. Whilst The Master’s Pupil still did the best in sales from the Nintendo Switch, this was a worthwhile endeavour for Pat and the rest of the team.
“Working with Noble Steed Games was pretty wonderful. It’s this weird clash of really casual and really professional, but not in a stuffy way.”
– Pat
Lessons learnt, friendships forged
Since working with us, Pat’s mentioned how he’s learnt so much about the importance of QA testing and seeking help from those with experience. In addition to porting The Master’s Pupil, we’ve continued supporting Pat (along with other devs) with our community events, big and small. Ultimately, we just want to see cool games thrive!
We hope you enjoyed reading this! Have a question or want to chat more about game development? Reach out to us!
Other places you can find us:
- Our other game development resources
- Join our Discord server
