Hiring an artist for my Steam capsule was a much better decision than I expected
A while back, I came across a post from Indie Game Joe that basically said, "Game devs, please use real artists for your Steam capsule art." The more I thought about it, the more I realized he probably had a point.
At the time, I was using placeholder images and wasn't planning to spend money on capsule art anytime soon. Eventually though, I decided to give it a try and hire an artist.
What surprised me wasn't that the artwork looked better. That part was expected. What surprised me was how much value came from the collaboration itself. I've only seen the initial concepts and sketches so far, but there were already compositions, details, and visual ideas that never would have occurred to me on my own.
As a solo developer, I'm used to doing everything myself, so I think I underestimated how much another creative person's perspective could add to a project.
The final artwork isn't finished yet, but so far it's been one of the most pleasant surprises of development.
The artist I'm currently working with is Varbas. I'll leave a link below because I genuinely think they're doing great work:
https://www.artstation.com/varbas
Also, the game is called STATION 07 and it's still very much a work in progress:
Posted Jun 17, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC