How Scrum kept a remote, cross-discipline indie team aligned - and got Mythic Merchants across the finish line on time.
Click any screenshot to expand · Official screenshots from Mythic Merchants · © Lazy Lion Games
New features and ideas kept surfacing mid-sprint. Without a clear framework to evaluate them, every good idea was a potential derailment.
The team was fully remote across multiple time zones. Async communication made it easy for work to drift without daily visibility into blockers.
Developers, artists, writers, sound designers, and QA all had different workflows and priorities. Keeping them in sync required deliberate structure.
Lazy Lion Games was launching its debut title. There was no playbook to fall back on - processes had to be built and iterated in real time.
Core game systems, Unity builds, bug fixes, and feature implementation across the full stack.
Characters, environments, UI art, and the bright cartoon visual identity that defines the game.
Character backstories, dialogue, and the worldbuilding that makes Tony, Mino, Rana, and Vulf feel alive.
Original audio, ambient sound, and sound effects tuned to the fast-paced workshop atmosphere.
Systematic playthroughs, bug documentation, and regression testing across all game builds.
Product vision, final decisions, and stakeholder alignment - the ultimate voice on scope and priority.
I established a full Scrum rhythm: daily standups, weekly sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives. Jira became the single source of truth for every task. The ceremonies gave the team a shared cadence - no one had to wonder what was happening next or who was blocked.
Scope creep was the biggest threat to our timeline. I worked with the studio founder to triage new requests against the existing backlog - parking valuable ideas in a "future" column rather than letting them interrupt active sprints. This kept the team focused without losing good ideas entirely.
Regular sprint reviews meant the studio founder could see progress, give feedback, and course-correct early - without disrupting the team mid-sprint. Decisions got made faster because context was never lost between conversations.
By maintaining sprint discipline over five months, we hit our original Steam launch date. Post-launch patches were identified and prioritized in pre-launch retros, so the team knew exactly what came next the moment the game went live.
"Running Scrum on an indie game taught me that process isn't bureaucracy - it's the thing that keeps creative people free to actually create."
- Angela Clemons, Scrum Master
Mythic Merchants launched on Steam on schedule - a first-time studio's debut title shipped on time, with post-launch support already scoped and ready. The Scrum framework gave the team confidence at every stage, and positive early reviews confirmed the game was in good shape.
As Scrum Master I had no formal authority over any discipline - I couldn't tell the developers what to build or the artists what to draw. My job was to create the conditions for good work: clear priorities, visible progress, and a culture where blockers got surfaced fast.
That constraint made me a better communicator and a more adaptable leader. I learned to read what each person needed from the process and meet them there.
Looking for a PM or Scrum Master who's shipped a game from concept to Steam? Let's talk.