Introduction

I got a chance to sit down with indie game developer Ed Marx, who made a one-of-a-kind surfing game called Surfer’s Code. Released on September 2nd, 2025, Surfer’s Code offers an open-world concept that stores plenty of secrets within the islands. Traveling by surfboard or jetski, players can explore their way around to discover hidden treasures and massive waves.

Q&A

Can you give me some background? What made you decide to develop a surfing game?

Well, I originally wanted to do a mobile game. When I was living in Taiwan, I had the idea of making a mobile game for people to learn English. Then I moved back over here (California), and I didn’t really want to make the English game because it was specific for that market. In order to talk about it, I would have to be over there. I started with a game called Search for Surf, but that didn’t do very well.

I read that you first became exposed to surfing from your dad as a teen in Southern California. What caused you to fall in love with surfing?

Haha, my dad, that's funny. My dad learned how to swim when he was fifty years old. No, my friend introduced me to it in high school. It was really hard to learn, but I could take the abuse at that time. My brother surfed too, so we would surf together a lot around the Ventura area.

Why title it Surfer’s Code? Is there something more to it than just the surfing etiquette?

So that was sort of an inside joke. There is a book called Surfer’s Code written by a surfer named Shaun Tomson, but also the joke is that surfers don’t code. That’s why there are no surfing games. There’s also an unspoken code that surfers know, but it's not necessarily real.

When developing the game, did you do everything yourself? Or did you have a team that helped with building the game?

I started out with doing the 3D modeling since I have a background in engineering. The hardest part was making the waves. There were a couple of games that did it really well; in fact, I was able to talk to one of the developers, and he gave me ideas, but they didn’t really work out. I ended up using colliders and a mesh to be able to get the waves to work in the game.

When I first started, I had a guy from San Diego helping me. When we released early access, it wasn’t really getting traction, so he kind of bailed on it; he said he has other games he wanted to make, and [Search for Surf] wasn’t really doing anything. It was good working with him because I had never made a game before, so he helped me with a lot of things.

I saw that Steam has the publisher listed as More Than Fun. Is that you acting as publisher? Or are they a separate publishing company?

So, when you are adding a game to a page, they ask you for different information. Since I didn’t really want to post just my name twice, I ended up creating an alias as a publisher in case I wanted to get incorporated someday. So yeah, it’s just me.

I saw that in your previous surfing game, Bruce Brown Films was listed as a publisher. Is this true?

Oh, yeah. They helped me a lot for my first game. They saw my game and liked it, so they offered to brand my game for me. They weren’t offering any money, sponsorships, or anything. They tried to sell it, like with a big company like Activision and stuff. The guy that was branding for me used to work in Japan for Activision, I think it was Activision. Anyway, he had some contacts that he pitched it to; we almost got it. We got some bites, but it never happened.

What aspects do you feel you were able to develop easily, and what aspects were challenging when trying to build Surfer’s Code?

I mean, really, the waves were the hardest part to figure out; I spent a lot of time with them, and they were one of the first things I started working on. It was a lot of trial and error to see what worked. After finding something that worked, I plugged it into Unity, since that's what I am using. I played with it some more and added a “capsule.” When I saw the capsule moving, I was thinking, “I figured it out,” and it was really cool. As of right now there's a small bug causing you to swim under the wave, but if I try to fix it, the performance goes way down. So until I can figure out how to fix it, I would rather have the better performance. The easy part was just adding more stuff around for the scenery.

How is it using Unity? Is it something that's pretty user-friendly? Or was that pretty difficult?

It would have been good to make it in Unreal Engine, since the game is open world. Originally I wanted to make a mobile game, so I knew I would have to switch it over.

While making this game, did you do any research into surfing? Or did you proceed with knowledge gained from previous experiences?

No, I didn’t really need to. I already have 30 years of experience, so I kind of already knew. You don’t really know surfing until you kind of know about it.

As someone who is somewhat of a connoisseur of video games, I haven’t noticed many surfing games. Would you say that you are pioneering this genre?

No, actually, since I started, there are some that have come out. Since I started a long time ago with Search for Surf, which is like this one. It didn’t do very well, but after listening to people’s feedback, I tried to make those improvements with this game.

What makes your game different from the other games that have come out?

Well, those other games are cool, but they focus more on tricks and not so much on the actual physics of surfing. My game is made for surfers, which can make it polarizing for gamers who are used to just mashing buttons to do tricks. For actual surfers that play the game, they can pick it up pretty easily since they have background knowledge of surfing.

Going back to Surfer’s Code, as I was playing, I noticed that each character had a unique voice. How did you manage to achieve that? Did you hire voice actors?

No, I actually really enjoyed that part. I was able to write the story through each character and tie it all together into something cohesive. I liked being able to start a different story with a character or something on the islands and then make a cause and effect. A good example would be the gold coins in the game. I was trying to figured out how the pirates I included in the game could be involved. Once you bring all the gold coins to the pirate captain, you will unlock a new surf wave. I also hid a little Easter egg in there; the captain's name is Jack O’Niell. If you didn’t know, he was the inventor/founder of O’Neill wetsuits.

What did you base the landscape on? While playing the game, I could tell it wasn’t something accurate to any one location.

Yeah, it's not meant to be any place in particular. In the original game it was based somewhere in the Pacific Ocean or Indian Ocean. I took that out and made it into a fictitious place.

While playing the game, I noticed one of the characters had a Confederate flag boogie board. Did you include that knowingly? Was there a statement being made by adding that in?

(Laughing) Well, there's a show I really liked called "Eastbound and Down," on HBO, I think? He was a baseball player who didn’t have a great personality, and he ended up going to Daytona Beach and had a boogie board with a Confederate flag on it. When he swam up to some other guys on the surf, they all made fun of him. So it was something that was sort of a little Easter egg.

Conclusion

Surfer's Code, an open-world surfing game, was released September 2nd, 2025. If you love surfing and want to play with friends, make sure to check out Ed Marx’s other game, The Endless Summer Surfing Challenge. Surfer's Code is available now on Steam. Make sure to give it a try!