A profile of Anthony Tan, the solo developer of Way to the Woods, a game that received Epic Games funding and remains unreleased nine years after its conception
Anthony Tan was 16 when his idea for a video game about a deer caught the industry's eye. Nine years later, he's still working on it. Mastodon: @dctrjack@aus.social Mastodon: Jack Ryan / @dctrjack@aus.social : 🦌 Today's New York Times Great Read is a story I've been writing in my brain for a few years now, about a ‘silly deer game’ and the man who has been building it since he was a kid. It's about growing up, making art, video games and life. — This is The Long, Long Way to the Woods. …
Context & Ripple Effects
This profile puts a long-running solo project in the context of independent game-making, where durable creator-led work can coexist with unusually long production cycles. Related coverage has examined both Spiderweb's long-lived independent development model and the creative importance of Twine's accessible tools for interactive games.
Epic Games' funding makes the project more than a private hobby: its prolonged path to release also illustrates the execution risk attached to backing a single developer and a highly personal creative process.
First-order effects
- Anthony Tan remains responsible for completing and shipping the game after nine years of development, while Epic Games' backing remains tied to an unreleased project.
- The profile renews public attention on the project, raising the visibility of both its original promise and its extended development timeline.
Second-order effects
- For funders and platform partners, the case reinforces the need to distinguish early creative interest from a reliable production schedule when supporting very small teams.
- Other solo developers may face sharper expectations to show sustainable scope and progress, even as examples such as Eric Barone's decade-long solo career demonstrate that creator-led games can endure.
Third-order effects
- If more high-profile indie projects follow this pattern, funding may increasingly favor milestone-based support, external production help, or small-team structures over backing a developer to work alone.
- The broader indie market could split further between long-horizon auteur projects and teams organized around predictable release cadence; whether either model wins depends on how audiences and funders value creative distinctiveness against delivery certainty.
The trend: This is one data point in the tension between the cultural appeal of solo auteur game development and the operational demands of bringing independently funded games to market.