Stu
Makes
Games.

I laid bricks for 22 years. Now I'm an indie game developer, building story games from the things I know: hard graft, family, and doing all the voices.

Why a bricklayer is making games

I always wanted to make an app and a game. Now I've done both.

Injuries changed things for me. Carpal tunnel and my lower back mean I can no longer do brickwork, so I'm moving into a new industry, from bricklaying to game design. I trained as an actor in 2016 and I've designed things for years, so I'm not starting from nothing. I come up with the ideas, write and storyboard them, and use AI to help with the coding, which is what turned the dream into something you can actually play.

I'm enjoying every second of it. I feel like this is where I belong.

First game

Brick Run

A brew-break runner, inside my app Hard Hat Way

Before any of this I built Hard Hat Way, an app for tradespeople and the customers who need them. It took 139 days, and it's on iPhone and Android. I'm a bricklayer, so I knew what the trade needed.

Then I wanted a game in it. Brick Run is a little endless runner for your tea break: a new course every day, the same one for everybody on the app, and a scoreboard for the week. It's small and simple, and it's the one that got me hooked.

Brick Run: a builder in orange leaping over a yellow skip of bricks, with a mug of tea ahead

Second game

Hard Hat Graft

From a caravan to a mansion, one brick at a time

A calm building game about a bricklayer from a small town. You start with a trowel, a caravan at the back of your dad's yard and a garden wall to build for the neighbour. You lay real walls brick by brick, hire a crew, grow a firm and watch the town change around the work you've done.

It's my story with my dad, more or less. The caravan-to-firm part is close to home. The part where you become a millionaire and build your own mansion on a lake? Still working on that one.

At the end there's one last build, and it isn't for you. It's for him.

  • In review with Apple. Coming soon, free on iPhone.
Hard Hat Graft title screen, a small town in green hills A bricklayer building a pizza oven in a back garden

Third game, and my first proper paid one

Pip, a small square pink pig

Pipp: Long Way Home

A storybook sneaking game. I do all the voices.

This is the one I've put everything into. I drafted the story and storyboarded it myself, then got AI to help with the coding so I could make what was in my head.

Pip is the smallest pig on Nettlebrook Farm and the very best at hiding. A flood sweeps him miles from home and the colour drains out of the world. He can't fight anyone, so he sneaks, sets traps and makes the baddies look very silly on the long walk back.

I voiced every character in it. All those years of acting training finally went on pigs.

Pip crossing a snowy field towards a lone scarecrow, in pink winter light

Thinking of making your first game?

If a bricklayer with no coding background can do it, it's worth a go. I've written up how I got here, what worked, and what I'd tell anyone starting out.

How I went from bricklayer to game developer