Solo game development

It's trying, for sure, but because of my love for game development and the passion I have for my game, I have a blast doing it. That's what keeps me going when, after a long day at work, I take a quick nap and head straight to game dev, or when I get up early in the morning on weekends in order to squeeze the maximum amount of development time out of the day. It reminds me of an interview I saw with Hideo Kojima. The interviewer asked him what was going through his head when he was developing the original Metal Gear game and he said something along the lines of, "I was making the game I wanted to play".

Then he was asked, "If you could talk to your younger self from 20 years ago, what would you say to him? His answer was, "Believe in yourself and push forward. The other part that really spoke to me was your story about the home sandwiches and laminated posters in order to attract PAX goers to play your game. I did a similar thing at the first convention not PAX I exhibited my game at.

My spouse came up with the idea of bringing a big bag of candy as an incentive to people to play my game and give me feedback.

That worked, but I also had to go talk to people and ask them to come over to my "booth" it was just a large table and play the game. It was certainly out of my comfort zone, but was also a very rewarding experience. Good luck! I really hope you finish your game in such a way that it fulfills your artistic vision, and that it is successful. I completely relate to the idea of wanting something to be your magnum opus. That's the dream, that's what motivates most people: to make something that matters as much to other people as it does to you, something that might last.

Why work on anything less? But I fear the computer game marketplace doesn't often reward that instinct. The longer it takes to get it done, the more technology transitions you have to survive. This year's hot platform is next year's mature market. A few years after that, it could even be stale. A sad example is Cliff Johnson, who put out an absolutely huge sequel to his classic puzzle game Fools Errand. He had a grand vision and he stuck to it for 10 years.

Unfortunately by the time it shipped his platform of choice Flash, a reasonable choice when he started was on the decline. Worse, his game would have been a great tablet game but mobile wasn't even on the radar when he started.

Through force of will he did eventually ship it but he ended up burnt out. Insult to injury, the game is likely to not be playable on modern computers in the near future. I would never urge anyone to compromise their labor of love though!

So I have no advice beyond keeping an eye on the big picture, find places to compromise in order to cross the finish line with enthusiasm and energy left to spare. You've already accomplished a lot. It's impressive! But, as in many things, you have to ship it before it "counts".

I really hope you get there. Tip 7 is epic facepalm. Should have given her a complementary jiffy-bag with Carpenter's The Thing and Cronenberg's The Fly while he was at it.

Being serious though, this article speaks the truth. Making games on your own is hard, as you simply don't have the support of others Log In. Sign Up. Remember me. Forgot password?

Don't have a GameDev. Sign up. Email Address. Careers Careers. Learn about game development. Follow Us. Not impossible, but the amount of time and skills needed are reasonably quite high to do most aspects of the game yourself. I know a person named Isayiah he is a solo dev. He made planet lifting simulator completely on his own, and the game aint half bad!

Just giving an example the game is here if you want to check it out. It is possible, many people have done it, maybe some contributors would help. But working in a team is much better. It depends on the situation. If you are doing a big project, then most definitely will it be hard. But with that being said, it is definitely possible to make a solo project. For a while I even managed to create a small community of players based around the game and would get lots of players without any advertising.

Sorry this sort of turned into an essay. Absolutely not impossible. Your tool solve all of my problems. HacknPlan is a fantastic tool, and make the project seems so clear! If you are a game dev, and you understand the dangers of multitasking, why have you created a system where boards are all subdivided into categories?.. Look at Trello. I am trying a one month small project and im going to try project planning like this.

Hopefully this works for me because I sometimes have problems committing to projects. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Dev Diary 2 Dev Diary 3 Trevor says:. I found this article really helpful and I was shocked that there were no comments on it!

Thanks again! Chris Estevez says:. Thanks for reading! Big Toe says:. Great article. Thanks for laying out some concrete steps as well as your work on this site. Robert Black says:. Simon The Pawpaw says:. Jan D says:. Cicero says:. Thanks a lot! The game puts players in control of a nameless, amnesiac protagonist, who finds himself thrust into the center of a convoluted drama upon a floating island inhabited by sentient, rabbit-like creatures.

Amaya programmed, illustrated, designed, wrote, and composed every aspect of Cave Story in his free time as a love letter to the games he played as a kid. Development took five years, with Amaya starting in college and continuing to work on the game once he started a full-time job. And then, after all that work, he released Cave Story for free.

The game rose to prominence in Japan, was eventually translated into English, and found an audience in the West. Amaya became players' initial perceived definition of an indie dev prior to Blow popularizing the profession as a paying career: a person who builds a game solely for passion, not cash. The ports to console and handheld do cost money, but charging players for the game didn't diminish Cave Story's popularity.

People seemed happy they could finally support the developer behind one of their favorite games. Cave Story is still remembered as one of the best Metroidvania games out there, and has earned widespread critical acclaim for the sheer size of its scope and compelling narrative. He created the game piece by piece, starting with title screen music and character movements. The main reason the game takes place in a series of interconnected caves is because Amaya originally built a bunch of enclosed spaces like the ones he remembered from Metroid and Castlevania.

Amaya just ran with these similarities, and implemented further level design decisions that resemble those seen in Metroid, like an intro level with two paths and an item down path one that unlocks the ability to further explore path two. Amaya felt this was necessary to teach players that they could solve problems on their own without a series of tutorials, something he believes is important for all Metroidvania titles. Of course, Amaya's method of design wasn't without its issues. In an interview with The Independent Gaming Source , Amaya admits that building the game piece by piece without a strategy or overall plan beforehand went on to cause unforeseen problems.

By the time he realized that dedicated map editing and data management tools would have proven useful, he was already too far into the game's development to turn back without losing a lot of his work. A Switch version has been announced, but there's no release date yet.

Dust: An Elysian Tail takes place in the fictional world Falana. Players take control of Dust , one of the anthropomorphic animals that lives there, whose discovery of a sentient sword and its playful guardian leads him on a journey to stop a villainous general.

Though he didn't write the soundtrack or voice the characters, Dodrill is responsible for designing and programming the entirety of Dust: An Elysian Tail. Dodrill told Polygon that he taught himself everything he knows about both illustration and animation, and began on An Elysian Tail as an independent animated film called Elysian Tail.

When he decided Elysian Tail 's story would better serve as a video game, Dodrill dropped the movie idea to focus on game design. In an interview with Ars Technica , Dodrill admitted that he first thought the process would only take three months. In actuality, it took Dodrill almost four years to finish the game. The workload took its toll on Dodrill, who tweeted out close to An Elysian Tail's launch date that he was still working and had discovered the " perfect diet " for losing weight: game development.

Dodrill also tweeted he lost 15 pounds in the final two months working on An Elysian Tail, and he'd had days where he'd sit at a computer for 18 hours just to meet his deadline.

Critics weren't wild about the game's combat--we also criticized the voice acting and story in our review --but An Elysian Tail has near universal praise for its character art, animation, and backgrounds. The newest game in this gallery, Iconoclasts is developed by Joakim "Konjak" Sandberg. Players take on the role of Robin, a naive and rebellious mechanic whose desire to always help others leads her to be increasingly involved in the religious and political conflicts that plague her planet and threaten her friends.

Sandberg worked on Iconoclasts for eight years. When he first started in , the game was called Ivory Springs and was exclusively for PC. The name changed to Iconoclasts when Sandberg officially announced the game in Sandberg followed up with semi-regular updates on his progress until and went mostly silent after that. Sandberg also used the opportunity to write about his inspiration behind the Iconoclasts.

He wanted to create a game that mixed the strong narrative and detailed world-building seen in Metroid Fusion and Monster World IV , and also featured the types of characters that evoked the same levels of charm and emotion found in Final Fantasy IX.

Iconoclasts was positively received. In our review , we commended the game for its art style and mechanics that call back to old-school Metroidvania, as well as its gripping story and numerous unique boss battles. Lone Survivor is developed by Jasper Byrne. It is a post-apocalyptic survival horror game where players take on the role of a nameless protagonist who must survive a world overrun by an infection that turns humans into mutants.

The protagonist suffers hallucinations, making it difficult to discern what's real and what's not. Byrne took inspirations from David Lynch's films while developing Lone Survivor. Like Lynch, Byrne wanted his characters' motivations and life history to simultaneously be the most important themes of his story and the most difficult details to define.

Lone Survivor has three different endings--the director's cut adds two more--and each is a confusing piece of a much larger story. Byrne deliberately kept Lone Survivor's narrative a secret throughout development, and still hasn't revealed the exact message the game is trying to present.

Byrne has expressed that one of the hardest parts of developing Lone Survivor was advertising the game, as most of its enjoyment comes from knowing nothing about the game before diving into it.