10+ years building games from scratch — solo.
Concepts, design, code, graphics, sound: all of it.
Physics sandboxes. Ragdoll systems. Mobile & Steam.
Everything is a sketch. Spiral development.
Motivation always comes from novelty, challenge, or necessity.
Behind every shipped game are dozens of experiments, jams, and wild concepts. Some had names and prototypes, others never left the sketchbook — but all of them shaped how I think and build.
I am Artem Naumov, known online as Art — a self-taught solo indie game developer with over a decade of experience creating and shipping games on my own terms. I handle everything: ideas, design, prototyping, code, graphics, audio, quality assurance, publishing and community management. I have a technical degree, but it has nothing to do with any of my skills — everything here I picked up on my own.
I have never held a traditional job — all my income has come from my own games and freelance work.
My biggest release, Stickman Ragdoll Playground, pioneered the open ragdoll sandbox genre on mobile in 2020 — the first to bring People Playground-style gameplay with mod support to Android. It grew to 6.9M+ downloads and directly inspired the wave of games that followed (Melon Playground and others).
I'm also a careful and attentive QA tester. I notice things. Beyond my own projects I've done QA and given game design recommendations for friends' projects and am open to freelance / outsource QA.
Currently in a research phase — studying AI tools, neural networks, 3D graphics pipelines, and emerging generative tech as groundwork for a new project. Long-standing interest in emergent systems: fractals, boids, slime mold, cellular automata.
I grew up without money, stability, or guidance. My father was an alcoholic — the family fell apart early. My stepfather was the same story. I spent most of my time outside of home and school — sitting in stairwells, drawing in notebooks. Drawing became my first real skill, starting around 2008 — along with photo editing and image manipulation in Photoshop. By 2014 I had taught myself enough programming to start making games. Everything since then — every shipped title, every skill on this page — came from self-education at home, driven by stubbornness and an internet connection.
I've worked with people too — though it rarely went smoothly. DEUL 2 was in development with HQHQ Games, but we fell out and the project died. Music Killer was built from scratch in six months — but I sold my share to my partner shortly after release. I also did contract work for Source Byte (Rogue Tower), but left quickly — COVID hit, times were hard, and I needed to support myself and my loved ones. That's exactly when Stickman Ragdoll Playground was born — out of necessity, during one of the roughest periods.
I deal with mental health challenges — bipolar disorder, paranoia, and social phobia — that sometimes lead me to unpublish projects, remove public info, or go quiet for a while. This is why some of my work is harder to find online. It does not affect the quality or consistency of my output: ten-plus years of released games with millions of installs, and over $250K earned independently in recent years alone, speak clearly to that. I have never held a traditional job — everything came from my own work.
Open for collab, QA outsource & freelance