What it takes to make a game by yourself (opens in new tab)

That looks really polished/professional. Nice work.

Damn. That gameplay looks tight. Keep up the good work!

Looks great, reminds me a lil of Vigilante 8.

What engine are you using. Did you go for tick based and/or deterministic physics?

Keep going and you'll get there! Your game looks great!

That is looking really fun for a casual game with friends!

With that kind of insight into each market segment, what monetization model are you seeing working the best on each platform?

I've had an idea for a small mobile game in mind now for a while, but I find the idea of potentially having to place ads in it to make back some of the investement not appealing. So I delay starting the project.

The dream would be to be able to offer it for a low price (1.5$ - 3$) and reach enough of an audience.

You're optimizing for revenue/chance of success, not for the creation itself, which most world-class indie games are optimizing for (e.g. stardew valley, dwarf fortress, celeste, hollow knight, etc).

Also, building a million simple mobile games will not magically compound into making you a great complex/deep game builder.

Not trying to say your strategy is wrong, I just don't agree with your strategy if someone's goal is to build the game they have in mind, exactly like they have it in their mind (assuming it's more than a simple mobile game). It will help in terms of general "steps" to have built a couple simple games before sure, but that's about it.

How do you compare flash game to mobile games ?

I have played a lot of flash games, but mobile games become boring very fast to me. I think this has to do with the input limitation of the device : touch with one thumb on half the screen. Maybe this force mobile games into limited gameplay choices.

Interesting story. Could you comment on the economics of running such a studio, which seems to be relying on casual gaming. A bit of insight into the market as well.

Really curious.

Which one of your games did you like the most?

Yep, you gotta get to release! The first you push all the way through to release is the hardest (at least so I've heard haha)

I’m working on a 2D game conceived by my 9-year-old who had played enough games that he was inspired to make one. He was thrilled as soon as the first animated graphics came onscreen. More valuable than my programming skills have been my project management skills: keeping the scope achievable and focusing on realistic milestones is a little harder when working with a 4th grader. It’s been a great learning and bonding experience for us both. Best of luck to you!

Yup, three times over...

I just released the third version on Steam EA, doing a stealth release for my own sanity. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/914930/Alcyon_Infinity/)

Payed for the graphical assets 10 years ago, made a soundtrack and most of a game, then got a reality check and moved out to contract work for a year on a polished turd game under a crazy Youtuber (Fuzecat).

Came back, worked on a second version and composed a soundtrack again. A month before we would have had a nice version to show to publishers got ghosted by the artist, got a reality check and went to contract work for a medium studio in Paris, worked on 2 pretty good games (WRC8, TT:2) that were good only through the sweat and tears of people on the ground. Returned home afterwards, half the people I knew there changed job.

Came back right for Covid years, worked freelance debugging and adding features (Neurodeck), then started again on my project...

Why?

Because sometimes there are things you have to do I guess :p I took only what worked from previous iterations, and cut as much things as I could.

The end product isn't what I started with anymore, but at least I got to the point that I could make it "Real", it has an options menu, and you can remap all inputs and there's and "End" and so forth.

I made at least 5 different prototypes within those 3 iterations of the same 2D Space Pew-Pew game: - open world scriptable missions and universe - fully scriptable universe for a Star Wars mod - Survival action - Pokemon Style - Roguelike - Bullet Hell (current one)

Only one has everything that makes it a full contained and shareable experience that I can play if I want 10 years from now :p

When I started learning programming 25+ years ago, I started a tetris clone. I was learning Pascal (Borland's TP 7 anyone?) as well as creating the game. Took me 2 months and was a smash hit among my colleagues at Uni. Next I did 5-in-row (Tic-Tac-Toe's more interesting big brother), which was another smash hit among the same colleagues. They were preferring playing those games instead of listening to the undergrad when we were in laboratories. Still have the source codes for both games somewhere. Good times.

I made www.chesscraft.ca for myself, mostly to survive my brutal commute to work pre pandemic. Today I still prioritize features I'll enjoy most, even tho I have 250k installs now.

The game will also never have ads, even tho lots of people tell me I'm missing out. Then again, those people haven't or can't build fun games.

Can't speak for Unity but you can make a pretty complete Unreal game solo in around a month or so if you've done it before.

I'd love to release some of my work (for free ofc) but I'm never truly happy with how limited my 3D art skills are so I always shelf it after finishing all the fun programming bits.

Me, actually- I've played in the past flash game Taberinos- before I've found out what its title was I've made a similar game for myself - and that's how BOINK! has been made: https://lukaszkups.itch.io/boink

I'd think it's closer to 1 in 100 then 1 in 10 that break even.

I've been working on my site: https://golfcourse.wiki for some time, and this is exactly how I feel all the time. Thank you for the encouragement.

I know this is a good idea. I know it will help people. I know I can either monetize it long term or even have it function as a non-profit. I also know it will take many years to slowly build to the functionality and content quality that I'm aiming for. Holding onto that long term view is extremely challenging.

Most days are just watching nothing happen, or slowly, slowly adding a single course (aggregated sites litter the golf internet, I want the opposite). One day I'll post on the golf subreddit and have 1000 users, get positive feedback, and the next two weeks just 5 users per day from google. And the kicker is, I'm genuinely embarrassed by some of the sub-optimal code and real lack of functionality I haven't addressed, even though I'm honestly very regularly working on it.

The best advice i got from a friend: only look at one-month or two-month increments as far as users. Day-to-day can get depressing, but on a bi-monthly basis, I've had slow-and-steady growth. At the same time, while I'm only up to 700 commits so far (vs 2000 in the article), I do have serious anxiety that I'm wasting years of my free time building something that won't amount to anything but a couple hundred upvotes on reddit, so I look at it as my unique hobby. I like mapping courses and making course books. It's my site and my hobby, and I'm fine if it's just me doing the work alone for the rest of my life. I believe that much in the project.

I've been making video games for a long time and while it's true they can feel unfinished for a long time, they shouldn't ever feel completely broken/disasterous/failed. One of the key things when making a video game is to make sure that it is fun and playable as early as possible into development, and when someone is grinding away working on something that isn't fun that's a pretty huge red flag to me.

The most difficult part about software engineering and IRL engineering is the feeling of “everything’s broken always” and just constantly needing to fix or tweak things. I understand that’s the job description basically but nice to hear it articulated by someone else

Real developers ship = real writers write = real painters paint, etc.

If you want to create things — anything, you put your ass in that chair every day regardless of whether you feel you are accomplishing anything. Eventually, you will start to make progress towards your goal. It gets better as you become better at staying the course.

Highly recommend The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which is a short, but important read on this very topic.

These are very wise words that I needed to hear today; thank you.

You go to hell and back thinking you have a broken disaster and come out beautifully the other side.

Bought it from the website https://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/ and just watching it. Thanks a lot for the tip! Really engaging documentary.

I very much admire the dedication to stick with coding and designing SV, but I also understand at some level how it works. But creating the art and music may as well be wizardry. Eric being able to do that also is awe-inspiring.

Toby Fox (Undertale) and Dōkutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) are a few other notable solo devs

Advance Wars is an absolute dream to clone. I had that itch too, and made a full clone with story mode in PICO-8 a couple years ago.

The challenge there was that PICO-8 has infuriating arbitrary restrictions on code size to limit the developers for fun lol. To get around that, I have code that swaps serialized memory between virtual "cartridges" in order to fit everything in.

Sadly that limits the game from distribution on the official PICO-8 network "Splore", because those games must be single-cartridge only, so I have a stripped down version without a campaign that is uploaded there.

The AI was by far the funnest to implement. Getting enemy ranged units to retreat correctly when they were in range of attack was such an awesome feeling. It really led me down a rabbit hole of making games primarily so that I could code fun AI

You can play in your browser here: https://lambdanaut.itch.io/picowars

Wow thats really cool! I love Advance Wars!

That's a broader theme. Watching TV is considered more childish than reading a book, even though TV content requires a lot more kinds of creative work in order to exist. The reason is that usually when the medium is richer, it demands less of its audience. Instead of imagining a scene, you're given its picture ready-made. Instead of actively following the lines of a story, you passively assimilate what appears before your eyes. It's less effort, and it's less active. It's common for people to watch TV in order to "turn off their brains" when exhausted. "Turning one's brain off" when reading a book is usually an accident, not an intentional thing, and happens a lot less.

Games demand more from their audience than TV, but you're still given a lot to consume passively, compared to a book: instead of imagining scenes, you're again given them as pictures. Games do compensate though with demanding that you make choices as you play a game, which may impact a story. Well... that's as long as the game is not an FPS, or a racing game, where choices don't matter for a story, as the story is either non-existent, or barely important; and what matters a lot more is your dexterity and reflex.

I agree. For a long time I felt games weren't art in the same vein as e.g. painting. More recently I've come to feel that's not true. As you say, making compelling games requires compelling art across multiple mediums. Add on top of that interactivity and agency! That's part of what's so satisfying about making them. It's an incredible challenge and measure of your ability.

This :) Got into dev maybe 20 years ago or so, because I wanted to build a game, but no one I knew could code. Eventually got annoyed enough and decided if no one (I knew) can code, then I should learn it instead! so I did. Now working as a senior dev (building mostly web stuff), but still not having built a game, I tried a few times (trying again at the min with Godot!) I now appreciate the people working on rendering, storytelling, animation, model creation and so much more, I am with you on the complexity, I think you have to try it to understand.

I think part of that is because we are expected to put up with frustrating software at work because we are getting paid for it so if the work is more work than it needs to be, well just shut up and do your job.

Games are supposed to be fun. The money goes the other way, so the annoyances are taken a bit more seriously. The creator has to take that frustration on themselves instead of externalizing it, which is more work for them.

Add to that the delight aspect, and games try crazy stuff that would never fly with business software. 'Safe' doesn't get you many accolades so you're essentially obliged to try at least a few things. And the shelf life is lower so even if you fuck up you usually only have to hear about it for three years and then you can try something new. Once in a while, every five years or so, one of those UI gambles ends up being adopted by the industry, so while not the most effective petri dish for general UX research, it still gets some results.

IME the US has a unhealthy culture of work. Religion too carries a "put childish things behind you" influence.

Things do appear to be changing, yet with older generations there's still a lot of judgement.

This is only sort of true. I’ve been making games for over thirty years and nearly hit twenty years of doing it professionally. The truth is you only need to be passable at some of those things. Even if you want to make a game by yourself. Whilst I don’t think everyone has a commercially successful game in them I also am pretty sure that’s way more to do with circumstance and project management ability than any sort of raw talent. On top of which no game is truly the work of one person even if the help is uncredited.

TLDR; games like movies are a sum of parts that is a lot less creative and original than might appear at first blush.

This is so true, except for that one glorious, fleeting period when iOS apps were new and you could be an overnight millionaire with something like Flappy Bird.

"programming, graphics, 3D or 2D art tools, artistic ability, UI and UX design, game design, music production, cinematography, storytelling, copywriting, etc etc."

Also! Physics, vector math, AI, cameras, shaders, networking, etc

Yes it is an art that can contains multiples others arts.

On a small project you also usually have to do the game design, it is art too.

And art is harder than technique in my opinion.

I got a lot of respect for artists.

Plus heavy math if not using an engine or if it involves more than what the engine provides.

> The irony of video games is that they’re often associated (at least in America) with childishness.

That's because most games are about shooting other people. This is something only children (and perhaps some dictators) love to think about.

You got a wishlist from me sir, your game looks perfect for my GF when she wants to relax after a hard day's work.

Just released my own game in EA, I'd say our saint patron Gabe Newell kinda failed us with the way discoverability works in Steam.

There is clutter problem that hides a lot of gems, and they have full coffers to solve it...

But eh... maybe it wasn't all about expanding the Human consciousness and Art and all :p

I've made a game with a team in~ 6 month, we almost didn't play it. And this is an obvious sign the game isn't "fun".

About your question, if part of your job is game design or assurance quality, you have to play the game a lot. Like a player would.

Here, consider watching MIT's edx course on game design [0]. I found it a good overview of many aspects and a reminder that board games (paper prototypes) can play a role in designing a game. I'm assuming you've already watched Extra Credits videos [1] about beginning.

[0] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-game-design

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5C6QC36h5eA...

Make a very small scope game first. Start with Pong or Breakout or the like, with your own slight twist (can be as simple as adding some unique colors). Keep it so simple that you can easily accomplish it.

Then make a slightly larger scale game, like an infinite runner 2d platformer. Keep the scope small, but try to finish every aspect of it (menu, sound, etc). Once you have a finished version you can decide whether you want to add to it or start another project of slightly larger scope.

Don't jump into it trying to make your dream game. Start with making the game that you can realistically make, and then gradually expand as needed. Once you've fully finished a game you'll have a much better understanding what you can do, what you'll need to learn to do your next project, how much work it was for that scope of project, etc.

Make a game where everything is a solid colored rectangle. Then go back and see what it would take to turn one of those rectangles into a simple animated character. This type of gradual progressing will let you focus on things one at a time, decide your own limits (will I make my own walking animation? or will I use a premade asset? How long will one walk animation take?)

Practice with game jams. 24h to cram _something_ out, 72 hour to get a nice little demo of some mechanic or story.

The theme and restrictions take away a lot of the choice and apprehension. And you're laser focused on the end goal and _will_ release something since you have an end date.

Since you seem to really want to do it, I highly recommend that you set aside a fixed amount of time every day and just sit down and start something - anything. You’d be surprised how far that can take you. Don’t go over the hour, though. You’re looking for consistency, not intensity.

I'd say, make a small thing that works. Then another, and another. They might start as independent little projects, but eventually can grow up into parts of a larger whole.

Let's start from step 1: What kind of game do you want to make, and why do you want to make it that way?

Yep, it's worth watching the video as I was really impressed by the diversity of gameplay.

Anyone can get into game development with low risk. Why start with the gargantuan task of a whole game? e.g. you could be making flightsim addons. Paint a few liveries or code a simple plugin and people will find value in it pay for it.

Consider modding! Using an existing engine that is malleable (or even has the assets you want) can be a great way to prototype or even achieve it without doing the really gritty stuff first.

Hi there fellow techie!

Counter-intuitively, the more games you make at once, the less effort each one takes. Because you can share resources between them. Of course, they have to have something in common to capitalize on this.

I'm aiming to make about 20 games at once, at the moment.

Didn't he get deplatformed for spreading hate speech?

If he iterated a lot, it's possible a lot of them were written like 5 times each though.

I often found people could get a concept up and running (nine levels is impressive) but that there were boring things still to do like high scores, saved games, control configuration UI, settings, etc. that were a sort of hurdle that many people weren't willing to invest in.

Then again, getting something just up to the point that it is playable, a proof of concept, is when you can really see if a game is fun or not. I have floppy disks full of games that never made it past that point because there was just ... something missing.

Did you release it?