Interview: Chatting with Dinkum developer James Bendon

Solo developer James Bendon found himself at the centre of attention when he released Dinkum into early access in 2022 following five years of development. The survival sandbox game took elements from games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley and presented them with a distinctly Australian twist. It was an instant hit, with players the world over jumping into the game and experiencing Aussie flora, fauna, and foods for the first time as they built up their little villages and tried to survive in the outback. 

In the years since, Dinkum has grown into a behemoth, picking up a publisher in Korean giant Krafton, being ported to the Nintendo Switch late last year, and in just a few days, seeing a physical release on Switch — a dream come true for lifelong Nintendo fan James. 

Dinkum is set to be released physically on Switch this Friday, on January 30, 2026. It’s currently available to preorder at EB Games, JB Hi-Fi, The Gamesmen, Big W, and Amazon. 

Earlier this month I got to sit down with James in a video chat to discuss the development of Dinkum, the Nintendo Switch release and physical edition, and what makes a fishing minigame great. It took a bit to get going, thanks to classic Australian internet issues, but after saying an old Australian incantation (“Let me switch to 4G”), we were on our way. 

How has your life changed since you started development on Dinkum? You’ve been at it for a while now, I imagine things were very different in the beginning compared to now. 

Yes, definitely. So, it’s always just been a solo project, just me. I was a hobbyist, and I’ve always wanted to be a game developer. So, I think the biggest change in my life is that now I’m a good game developer. I can actually say that, instead of just being a hobbyist. 

Otherwise, the biggest change has been… My wife supported me for 5 years, while I pursued this pipe dream, and I was lucky enough that the result allowed me to give that back in turn. So now she can pursue her interests and her goals, so that’s a really good feeling as well. 

What inspired you to create Dinkum in the first place? 

Obviously, you can tell that I’m a big fan of the Animal Crossing series and Nintendo in general, I love everything Nintendo. I started making games for the web a long, long time ago as a teenager — Flash games were my bread and butter. Eventually I moved on to Unity, when Flash kind of disappeared from the internet. 

I just always enjoyed making games, so I wanted to create an Animal Crossing-inspired game that I felt had all the features that Animal Crossing at the time was missing. I started in 2017, and then somewhere in there they announced New Horizons. And I thought, you know, “my game’s so unique, it’s set on an island, and you can build the town from scratch, and you can place pathing, and this is all the stuff Animal Crossing fans want.”

And then they announced New Horizons, and I’m like “Oh, it’s set on an island and you can set up your own town, just the way you want.”

Though I think in the end they are very different games. Dinkum’s I think is more like a survival game that turns into a town sim kind of thing. There’s definitely crossovers, but I feel like Dinkum has its own identity, and I wanted to give players more and more options, so I like to expand it in that direction. 

Given you’re such a big Nintendo fan, how does it feel to have a game on a Nintendo console?

It’s a dream, you know? When I started making games as a kid, Nintendo was the peak, it still is to me. I love everything they do. I don’t think they can make a bad game, I don’t think it’s possible. 

But to have my game on the same console, or any Nintendo console is like a lifelong dream that has come true. If you’d asked me even 5 years ago, I never would have thought that I’d get to, especially even having the box copy. I’m out of fashion and out of style, but it means so much to me that I can see my game on the shelf in a store, just like I used to dream as a kid. 

Are you going to be heading to EB Games to pick up a copy on launch day? 

Yeah, I have one pre-ordered, just one copy. I’m not gonna make it a big thing, I’m just gonna walk in and then get my game and then walk out. But I’m very excited. I’ve pre-ordered a copy of my own game, I mean that is quite fun. 

Why do you think Australian indie developers have made such a big splash on the global scene in recent years?

I think it might have something to do with all of our big AAA studios closing down a few years ago. I think Australian indies are doing really well, and I’m sure there are bigger studios still doing well, but in general, I feel like indie games are the most interesting games at the moment. 

So I think it’s a bit, you know, the people that are left here that want to make games. They’re passionate, and they’re driven, so they can make the game that they want, rather than the game they think will sell well. I think that just has an effect on the resulting game, so, I think it’s not just Australian games, it’s Australian indies. 

When you released Dinkum into early access, was it an immediate hit, or did it take a while to build up? 

To me it was an immediate hit, yes, a lot faster than I expected. I remember, I think in the first 4 or 5 months, I’d sold 200,000 copies, and that was how many copies I wanted to sell, like that was my goal. That was how many copies I expected to sell over the lifetime of the game for it to be financially viable for me to create the next game. 

I didn’t think it would keep selling the same as it did. 

Obviously it’s gotten a lot bigger since then. There’s 15,000 reviews on Steam, obviously doing well on Switch, how much longer do you think you’ll stick with Dinkum?

I think it’s easy to support something that you know people love, so I think as long as there are people playing Dinkum I will be inspired to continue adding to and tweaking the game. Sometimes I finish an update and then I just need a little bit of time away from Dinkum, and I play around in other projects. But once I’ve had enough rest, I’m reading all of the feedback and suggestions that the community gives, it just makes me wanna dive back in. So I think there’s still a bit of Dinkum left in me. 

You did an AMA on Reddit a couple of months ago and a lot of people were asking for specific features — how many of those are you like, damn, I really need to do that?

That’s the hard part. I always love reading the suggestions because often people will know what part of the game is lacking, and they’ll give like a suggestion to fix what’s lacking, but I like to find a balance where I can give them what they want, while introducing new gameplay elements, and keeping true to what I think Dinkum is. 

So I think that kind of collaboration is… I think that’s what makes a lot of these games, that have a community that are so passionate, and they can work together. Sometimes I’ll get a suggestion for a feature that’s just in another game, and I think they’re fine suggestions, but I’d prefer to find a way to incorporate it that still fits true. 

Like one of the suggestions for a long time was to be able to pick up chests or transfer them, and I think that’s one of my most proud features I added. I added a dolly trolley, or a hand trolley that you can pick up chests and move them around. So I really like that, the players felt that this certain feature was lacking, so I got to implement it in a way that felt like a fun gameplay element. 

And of course the community, in turn, finds ways to not exploit, but use the new thing that I’ve added, unexpectedly. That kind of back and forth is what I love. 

What’s the most unexpected thing that you found that players were able to do that you didn’t intend to happen? 

There’s so many that I can’t even remember a specific one. And some of them were so egregious that I had to patch them, so yeah, there’s too many. I think it comes with the game being a sandbox — because the player can influence aspects of the game, it’s easy to find these kinds of cheesy tactics. So even something like building. Building lets you defeat bosses very easily, because I can’t guess what their terrain looks like or what items are there, so that’s a really common strategy, to essentially stack a bunch of fish tanks on top of each other, so that you can beat a boss without it giving you damage. 

But I think most of those are OK, like, the ones that are still in the game. If the player feels like they’ve found a solution, like that kind of exploit, I think that’s okay. But another one that I can remember was that if you brought a windmill down into the mines, you could glitch through the walls and open up treasure chests without any keys. Those kinds of ones, I feel like, “oh no, that one needx to be fixed.”

So it’s more about letting players have their fun within the bounds of what you want players to be doing, but not just breaking things altogether?

Yeah, I mean, obviously anything that stops the player from progressing, that definitely needs to be fixed. And that was a concern with the windmills in the mines, you could get trapped and it would soft lock the player. 

Has there been any specific piece of feedback that you’ve gotten that’s really stuck in your head? 

Yes, and I still grapple with it. So, Dinkum does have combat, and that’s how I wanted the game to be. There are some dangerous areas the player can explore, but there is a large subset of the community that doesn’t want to engage with that. And I understand, like they prefer the town building and decorating rather than the dungeon exploring and fighting, so I’ve been grappling with that since the start of the game. Trying to offer the items and treasures to players who don’t want to engage with that aspect, while also not giving them everything other players that do want to engage with it have earned. Keeping that sense of achievement, while also offering the prizes to other players, I think is really difficult, but it’s something I want to continue working with. 

I added a wishing well into the game that can let you kind of change the rules or difficulty of the game, but I think there is more to be done. 

Fishing minigames have become extremely popular, and they can make or break a game — how did you go about making Dinkum’s fishing minigame unique?

It’s been tweaked a lot, even through early access, and it is hard to get right. You want it to be hard enough that it feels like a challenge, but easy enough that it’s not wasting the player’s time, or making them frustrated. From the feedback I’ve read, that’s still not [entirely] fixed, but what I think makes Dinkum’s fishing different is the fact that the player can see the fish in the water. I think that was needed to make the fishing feel different, it couldn’t be like a gacha machine. The fish you see in the water is the fish you get, and leveling or balancing the high value fish with the player’s fishing skill level was tricky as well. 

But I do believe that fishing mini games do make all games better. 

Dinkum exists in this sort of sphere of what people call cosy games. Why do you think the genre has taken off as much as it has?

That’s a good question. I’ve thought about it, and I don’t know if I can give a good answer. I think being able to achieve things quickly, and then seeing the results of your achievements, I think that’s human nature. It’s a little bit addictive, you wake up in the morning, if your day’s 20 minutes long, you can get a lot done in 2 hours. So I think there’s an element of that. 

I think there’s also an element of people being overwhelmed with how the world is at the moment, and it’s a nice place to retreat or relax. For me, I’m getting tired of games where the whole purpose is competition or violence, shooting people. It isn’t the kind of game I like — I’ve played a lot of games where I do that but that’s not the kind of game I’m looking for anymore. But yeah, I don’t know the answer to the question. 

I don’t know the exact reasons, I just know that people seem to love it. But maybe those people were always there, and people are just cracking on to “oh wait, there are people that want these games. I think there might be that as well. 

Dinkum is a very Australian game. How do you go about balancing including Australian culture without alienating overseas audiences? 

I don’t think you need to do it. I think it feels exotic, or I hope it feels exotic, just like the mundanity of items like a sausage roll, or at the end of the year, you get a snag, like a sausage on bread. That’s normal. Or even like the plants, I have wattles and bottle brushes, and bush limes or finger limes. I think, if you were playing a game set on an alien world, you would understand what these things are, and I think players like that kind of digital tourism, where they kind of absorb the culture through osmosis. So I think, for the most part, you don’t have to.

I noticed in the AMA that a few people were surprised to find out that many of the creatures featured in Dinkum aren’t made up. I thought that was a fun interaction. 

Definitely. Like, a lot of people think that I made up cassowaries, as if they’re not a real animal. I mean, they’re not called cassowaries in my game, but they’re scared of these dangerous birds, and I like imparting that, giving that to the player. 

When Dinkum was first released in early access, there was a lot of discussion about the lack of Aboriginal Australian representation in the game. What did you learn from that?

I learned that everyone wants to be seen. I was trying to create a game that was based on my childhood, growing up in a small rural bush town with tin roofs, that’s what I was trying to give. But I think that I kind of accidentally made a game about Australia, and Australia’s a big country, and I think, if I were to do everything again, I would be more mindful of that. 

And finally, what games have you been playing lately?

Well, the last game I played that I absolutely adored was Silksong, obviously. I don’t think I’ll ever play a game like that again. I liked Hollow Night, but I loved Silksong. The rest of it, just a bit of Kirby Air Riders, and I’m trying to get back to finishing Donkey Kong Bananza, because for some reason I just stopped playing it. I think it was because Silksong came out.