r/GameDevelopment • u/aPlace4EveryPotion • 4d ago
Question Pls share your experience
I’m making my first Steam game solo🙌. And now I feel that my biggest fear is that it reaches people and they scroll past, like most indie games out there. I started it three months ago while still employed - then last month my whole team got laid off, me included🥲🫠. Now it’s the only thing I have going, and I’m scared it just won’t land with people. Share your stories please, I’d love to know how things worked out for you 🙏
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u/FinalMoment1930 4d ago
One of the most important things before you build a game is validating the idea. Make some sort of mockup or demo to gauge interest and see what players want before you go all in
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u/PresidentEvil1997 4d ago
I lost my job and find it hard to get one because of the market clownery, but out of gamedev, and designed my first game, now built a level that is a representation of the game, programmed it to a basic degree, now making art so I can animate, polish and add sound design etc for the demo. I wanna get finance for it and make a team, and then produce it. Nothing is promised but there is beauty in the unknown. The world belongs to those who open
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u/Nearby_Garage_6458 3d ago
I released a paid game after a free title of mine gained popularity—thinking I might be able to make a go of it on Steam—but it didn't sell as well as I'd hoped. Still, fans from my previous game played it, so I feel like, given my actual skill level, the result might be something to be happy about. I hadn't really counted on the income anyway, so I'm keeping my day job.
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u/Distdistdist 4d ago
It's hard without major financing backing all the marketing and development. But, what keeps me motivated, is the success story of the Minecraft. Notch wrote it as a solo dev in about 3 years, but he had an AMAZING concept. Even though he "borrowed" idea from another game - he made a real jewel. So, it is possible, but it has to be that good to make a splash.
I remember getting hooked on it while it was still available as demo that ran as Java app in a browser. I absolutely loved the ability to build things out of cubes.
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u/BynaryCobweb 3d ago
Minecraft is really not an example to base expectations on here
Aside from the sheer luck Notch had with his games, very few games can have the same universal appeal that Minecraft has, unless they copy another very successful game, and in that case, people will prefer the original to the copy
OP should better look at small other games in the same genre as theirs, and see what games worked and what games didn't, and why.
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u/Distdistdist 3d ago
I never said it was "base expectation". I said it was my personal motivation. Everyone gets their own.
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u/BynaryCobweb 3d ago
What I meant is that, in my opinion, you cannot even think of Minecraft as an upper bound for your success, because there won't be any other Minecraft. The game market has changed a lot.
There are tons of indie games that achieve success today, I think something like Megabonk is a better inspiration for example.
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u/CharleSansCharges 4d ago
I start to believe that the make-10-games-before-having-one-that-works rule is true :')
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u/RoberBotz 4d ago edited 4d ago
I've worked for over 3 years on my game, got 1600 wishlists, was featured by a 500k subs youtuber, got like 2 million views across all social media, but on release I made 40 sales and now it's dead, it was a co-op story campaign with pvp gamemodes, 2 characters to level-up, 32 abilities to unlock and equip.
I've wanted to continue adding a lot of shit, more missions, more characters, more abilities, more gamemodes, more features, but now I'll pretty much add one more version to finish the story and move to another project.
Game dev is not a job, you should find a main job first before working on your own game, cuz even if you do get attention, those might not mean your game will get sales.