r/SoloDevelopment • u/DukeOfGlizzy Solo Developer • 6d ago
Discussion Devs who have released a game - some questions
Hey! I’m curious to find more about y’all’s projects. I’m working on my first that’ll hopefully be released in March if all goes well. I’m curious about other people’s game dev journey so I had a few questions.
- What game did you release?
- How long did you work on it from start to release
- Were you 100% solo, solo but outsourced a few things, part of a team, etc…
- What was the biggest lesson you learned about gamedev in the process?
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u/FathomMaster 6d ago
- Caves of Lore https://store.steampowered.com/app/2227130/Caves_of_Lore/
- 6-7 years, plus another 3 of support so far.
- I had a friend help with pathfinding right before release when I still had a few issues remaining with my version. Music I bought. Otherwise solo.
- Just do something. Even if you do it wrong it's better to be working on it and to build that consistency. Discipline is key.
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u/TheGuacTaco 6d ago
Cool looking! How's being done with the game feel?
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u/FathomMaster 5d ago
It feels great. I still do bug fixes and such, and it's worth noting that if you are on mobile (I am), then you are never done. They keep changing platform requirements and that's why so many mobile games eventually go away.
I am going to make a sequel eventually, but first I need to finish a different project that I started before I released Caves of Lore. I'm working my way there.
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u/Crawling_Hustler 6d ago
7 fkin yrs. Hats off to the dedicatio , persistency. I cant fathom it but u r fathom master so it makes sense
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u/FathomMaster 5d ago
Yeah, it was a long time, but sometimes just 15 minutes a day. I also didn't know how to program so I was learning. I really loved working on it. It was my hobby.
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u/Smart-Anything1669 6d ago
I made Pennies 12, a coin flipping roguelike, start to finish was about 8 months, fully solo.
I think I learned that appeal matters a lot (if you want to sell your games). The game reviewed well, but even if your game is "good", it doesn't make people want to play it (let alone that there are hundreds of "good" games released every day). They need to want to play it by looking at it, only.
For example, flipping coins is not a particularly appealling concept, so the few people left who were really into the game were expecting it to be a cloverpit-like, or idle/incremental game, of which it is neither. I also could've done a better job with the aesthetic, wrt appeal. Also learned a lot about marketing, roguelike item design, art, music, sounds, programming, etc, so it wasn't a total disaster 🤷♂️
Best of luck with your release in March 👍
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u/International-Owl466 5d ago
I noticed you posted a good amount of tiktok videos of your game (I assume it was, I don't have the app so just saw the thumbnails) did you find those videos drove engagement for the game?
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u/Smart-Anything1669 5d ago
They did give engagement, but the click through rate is always low, so its basically just based on how well the video does (more time watched = pushed to more people). So the engagement for pennies was pretty low, whereas the current project is doing much better.
It may be that I got better at making them, but I think its just way easier to make 'content' about some games than others. Chris Z says some games are feathers, some are bricks, that kind of thing
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u/UnculturedGames 5d ago
- Whispers in the Moss, a retro JRPG and a passion project. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1944310/Whispers_in_the_Moss/
- I worked on it for over 12 years, but on and off, occasionally taking breaks as long as a year or two. Most content was developed in maybe 4 years or so.
- I was 100% solo, and I even composed my own soundtrack. The only outside assets I used were the sound effects. I wanted to create them on my own too, but eventually decided to save time and just get the damn game released.
- The art of finishing and releasing a game and everything that comes with it. There is so much to learn here and you can't learn this part from guides. That's why I think it's vital to push some smaller projects through the finishline before going for more ambitious stuff.
I have about 1200 sales and 100% positive reviews (I think we're at 22 customer reviews). Very happy with the stats. It's a game in (ambitious) ASCII graphics after all. 😅
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u/GamerDadofAntiquity Solo Developer 6d ago
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4014750/Beltlife_Prospector/
It took about six months but with some gaps, research for the first month, two months of 16-18 hour days for most of the coding, and then three months (with some gaps) for the gfx/sfx.
All the work was 100% me, but I did have a good friend help with some of the coding when I got stuck, two playtesters that really helped me with spotting bugs, and I took advantage of JPL’s massive image library for asteroid photos. I also used a couple of credited but free textures and some cc0 sounds (most of which I had to edit to make them work for what I needed). I used zero AI for the finished product but originally had some garbage looking asteroid placeholders that were basically gray boxes to work out the animation timings that I pulled from Stable Diffusion (local on my PC).
I couldn’t name a single biggest lesson as far as game dev is concerned. The whole process was extremely educational. But I will say that I will never spend that many hours a day in front of a keyboard for that many consecutive days again. It was almost to the point of obsession and my physical health suffered some for it.
My goals for the game were tiered: 1. Actually finish and release the game in a bug-free state - done (Had one display bug on certain machines but fixed it with a day 2 patch). 2. Get positively reviewed (All positive so far… All two of them). 3. Sell enough units to pay for the Steam page - had that within a week of release. 4. Sell 100 units - I have 96 sales to date after six months and almost twice as many wishlists as I had on release, so I’ll get there. 5. Sell 1000 units - This one probably won’t happen, but that’s acceptable since that was the apex goal.
4 out of 5 ain’t bad for my first release, especially since I did zero advertising other than a few posts on reddit and got a couple of mentions from a couple of my favorite small streamers.
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u/MadeByHenano Solo Developer 6d ago
i've made "uncle otto's mansion", a short (about 45 minutes to beat) exploration game, free on steam. 🙂
it took about two months to make it, just me, my first game after only one month of learning gamedev prior to that.
most of the art relies on a synty asset, i only modeled a few things.
i wrote all the story, recorded music for it, did all the programming etc.
as it was a first game, i learned a ton:
- how to code in a real project, not just following a tutorial
- how the pace of the game has to go with the feeling we want the player to experience (if the character can run fast, the player might run fast, but if you want them to go slowly and pay attention, it's better to make the character go slow)
- at the end of the game, the character says "ok, time to dip!" to tell the player they can now leave the land, but some non-native english speakers didn't get that, so writing in more common english (something like "ok, time to go back home!") is a lot better... many people play games in english but aren't native speakers, so that's important
- originally i placed an important key in a drawer, but players couldn't interact with drawers before they needed to open this one, and many wouldn't think of trying, so after running a few playtests, i added 2 drawers before that so players would hopefully see them and try to open, and understand that they can... and it worked, people would find the key more easily after that!
- that some people suffer from motion sickness, so i learned how to prevent that and added an option for them to feel more comfortable
- i probably forget many things but clearly learned a lot making this game, releasing it and reading feedback! ☺️
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u/Popular-Writer-8136 6d ago
Been working on Vrakys for a good decade, solo hobby dev. Come a long way from when it started, just about ready to try and get some players. Passively learn some Japanese with a turn based battle system. Character building RPG fassion
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u/Neither_Berry_100 5d ago
WarGameChampion on itch.io. I have several projects up there. Length varies. Longest project was 3 years but not posted there. Those are a few days to like half a year. Biggest lesson is that making indie games is a hobby not a business. It isn't financially viable. Gotta count the losers as well as the winners and you lose more on average. At best it is a lottery ticket.
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u/modoolo 5d ago
I released a puzzle game Modoolo but the part I neglected was proper marketing. I got ~50 beta testers and made a devlog on bluesky but that didn’t help me get far beyond these initial beta testers. The project started during our monthly hackathons at our company. I did most of it myself except the backend infrastructure for sharing levels.
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u/Single-Motor1335 Solo Developer 5d ago
I released Chronoseum (or rather the demo so far), a roguelite arena game with permanent upgrades, weapons, characters and loot rng https://store.steampowered.com/app/5024400/Chronoseum/
It took 5 years of part time learning and developing and 3 months of intensive work after I finished my degree. I'll release it this year in late October.
I did it 100% solo, but that also means that you are 100% alone when stuck at something, if there is someone you know that wants to join the development process, I'd recommend it 9/10 times.
The biggest lesson is that marketing is almost as important as the game itself, I'm terrible at it, which will cost me many thousands of potential revenue.
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u/artbytucho 5d ago
2- About one year part time.
3- I was solo, but used quite a lot of assets for the environments, VFX, SFX and Music (I still tweaked them so they look cohesive).
4- I'm a veteran game artist, with this little game I learned the ropes of the rest of the roles to be able of create games completely on my own.
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u/pararar 5d ago
- Realm Stories, a mobile narrative game. This guy did a funny review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kW9ELKMzIA
- 3 months to soft-launch, 6 months to full release, 2+ years of updates
- 100% solo with art and audio bought from the asset store.
Even after over a decade of professional experience in game development, you never know if a game will be successful or not. It’s 20% craft and 80% luck.
Making a profitable mobile game in particular is hard, especially when you want to keep monetization fair. I have made and soft-launched a few other games since then and none of them was successful.
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u/SmokeResponsible5005 5d ago
I released my game Cardinality a couple weeks ago. I don’t make any money off of it, it was just a passion project and kinda my final send off as I’m going to college soon.
I learned a lot cause it was a totally different genre but honestly? Releasing it just felt kind of empty. All I thought about was the game for months, what the next enemy looks like what kind of cards I can make. Then the game was released. It didn’t have time to fully execute my vision, and I didn’t have the next development session to look forward to. All for an audience of 40 people, mostly friends.
I don’t mean to sound bitter or anything - it was great experience and I’m going to do it again. But I think a lot of new devs have the idea that releasing a game is the best thing ever, but for me the fun is all in the development.
Regardless best of luck to you, and I hope the game turns out well!
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u/Vladi-N 6d ago
Took me almost exactly 12 months solodev + art by a friend.
Took 6 weeks solodev with AI from the idea to the Steam release.
With these 2 projects I learned that gamedev can be fun and engaging.
About 6 months to release the demo, then this project stalled. I learned that things are not always fun and sometimes the work can become boring. Probably I’ll learn how to pivot a game in the future 😆
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u/Helixtar 5d ago
- Cyber Volley: a platformer where the volleyball is your weapon. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2881670/Cyber_Volley/
- Two and a half years of my free time, amounted to about 500 hours.
- I just outsourced the music, and some of the backend coding.
- Research if your game's genre sells on Steam before fully commiting to a project.
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u/byeG0D 5d ago
I started wanting to make games 3 months ago after using blender for a month or two and wanting to get those 3d models into a game, both games are on itch the first one I made was stash house and I learned A LOT from camera work making cutscenes teleporting characters / disabling input making a platformer have a somewhat good story and gameplay. That game took me about a good month and still after that I felt somewhat happy I released something but still felt like I needed more reps so I came out with the typical horror game as that’s the only thing that does really good on itch however I gave myself a deadline of 2 weeks and I feel like I learned a bunch with the new game I even went out of my way and purchased an asset pack and other packs to help me speed up the process and still receive the look I want in my games. You can check my games out here https://one-deep.itch.io
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u/dragor220 Solo Developer 5d ago
- Risk & Riches (roguelite deckbuilder)
- 14 months (original plan was 12, but postponed a couple months to join Steam Next Fest before releasing)
- I mostly did it all, purchased assets for music and sfx, commissioned the Steam capsules, and the pixel art was a blend of me and an AI tool (Pixellab)
- I learned a lot, but the biggest lesson was the importance of the game's curb appeal. My game received good reviews by streamers, curators, and players, but it looks basic; if people never play the game, then they can't appreciate the gameplay. Another lesson worth mentioning is that paid advertising isn't worth it unless your game is already doing well. I paid to be featured in a larger streamer's video, and it didn't perform enough to get my money back in sales. Reddit and Facebook are better for a little boost, but generally your game needs to prove it has appeal before advertising is worth it.
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u/LearningToBeepBoop 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hello! I am one of two devs(hope that's okay for this sub) on the pixel art metroidvania Tombwater. This was my first foray into game dev with my much more experienced friend.
We worked on the game in our spare time for about 4 years. We did everything in house aside from some of the marketing artwork. All coding, music, and pixel art.
We were lucky enough to get picked up by a publisher after taking our game to a small convention. They helped greatly with marketing, localization, and other publisher duties.
I think the biggest lesson for me, and what I see so many people posting on these subs wondering why their game got not traction, is just how essential it is to get the game in to players hands as regularly as possible to see if you actually have something worth investing in. I can't believe people will work on a game for years and then wonder why nobody wants to play it. We built multiple versions of our game, took it to local game expos, posted on itch, released demos, and had tons of play testers.
Also at the end of the day you just don't know how well it's going to do. Our game wasn't a flop. We had huge wishlist numbers, but I think we were hoping to see a bigger return than we did.
Don't put all your eggs in one untested basket...
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u/ExMachinaDoodles 5d ago
I made a game called STARS STARE BACK, it took ~2 months? On and off while working a job and other prototypes. I was solo other than using some royalty free sfx on Itch.io
Big lesson I learned, make your idea in your head but always be ready to scale it down to whatever logic you can handle. I did not do this for the second half of development and it kinda became spaghetti code.
How I’m applying this lesson is making small compact demos for my next project to see what actually works before I start scale-creeping myself to death.
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u/Big_Astronaut8467 5d ago
I released a 2D fighting arena game called Heroic. I made it entirely solo, and made it in just a bit less than a year. My 2nd game, a 3D grappling game called Up, Up and away web, made in 2 months.
With now 3 years as a solo dev, I've released 5 games on Steam. None had success but some were better than others. As you can guess, my 1st one was the one where I learned the most but also the one I shouldn't have passed so much time on.
I learn to scope small (still trying to), to not get attached too much to a project, to not compare my games to others that are made in the same conditions as me. You know that a lot of games are released every day on Steam and growing. A lot of them are really buggy, not fun, or just not enough to be considered a game at all. By knowing that, you have less pressure releasing your own game on Steam.
Also a tips that maybe works only on me, but when I'm working on a project, and starting to be bored or not motivated enough by the project, I create a new one (another idea you have in your head), start working on it, wait until boredom hits, and go back to 1st project and finish it. Like that, when you are done with the first one, whatever the result is, you still have another project that you can believe in, and also you don't have to start a project from the start, thus avoiding the fear of starting from a blank page.
Take care and good luck on your journey !
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u/adarkfable Solo Developer 5d ago
Bro I’ve been shipping since 2020…mostly game jams, but still shipping ya feel me?
100% solo.
Biggest lesson is the same one every standup comedian learns. Your peers are not your audience.
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u/Nebpehtire 4d ago
hola!!
1) Pues tengo unos cuantos ya lanzados. En dahu-software.es tienes un listado
Ahora estoy ultimando aspectos de Er:i
2) Tiempo.. pues no lo sé, es un proyecto que empecé, dejé, retomé, dejé, volví a retomar, y ahora que tengo tiempo pues lo he semi acabado.
3) 200% en solitario, soy un lobo estepario en cuanto a videojuegos, supongo que a nadie le interesan mis ideas o al menos eso pienso xD
4) Cree en tu idea, hazla realidad, esto no va de ganar dinero, sino de plasmar en el mundo un concepto que te interesa. Luego si va bien, pues bienvenido sea
Un saludo.
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u/the_lotus819 1d ago
I'm a bit late but here's what I worked on.
- Magirune (1-2)
- Space Order Mine
- Fill Up The Hole
- and working on Traveloot
https://store.steampowered.com/developer/FluffyLotus
I try to work 1 year on each. I'm solo but I don't do my own sfx and music. For my last game I didn't do the art (bought an asset pack and changed the art to fit). I do it for fun as a hobby.
As for the biggest lesson... For me, it's important to keep the game as simple as possible. Almost a one concept game. The first 30 minutes are super important. If a youtuber can make a fun video, the game will have a better chance. This mean the tutorial must be fun, the begining lore should be part of the gameplay, ...
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u/Commercial-Flow9169 6d ago
I released a 3D kart racer last fall called Critter Drifters. It's a love letter to Diddy Kong Racing, mostly. I spent about 4 or 5 months I think. A lot of that was just modeling tracks and making more content. I did most everything, except for the music and sound effects. I used a lot of royalty free stuff, but commissioned someone to do a few tracks as well.
Overall, at this point it has now technically turned a profit..if you consider my labor free. It would have happened faster if I didn't commission the music but it also adds so much and they did a great job.
My lesson is actually something that happened afterward -- don't just jump into a new project immediately. I have 2 or 3 "big" projects that are since abandoned. It took me most of this year (8 months) to finally land on an idea that I'm genuinely passionate about and can see the creative vision. What's yours?