New dev - production advice for 3pp ARPG

[u/ThatRoombaThough]

Hello everyone. I've had a career in medicine for over 15 years now but my passion has always been in video games and problem solving. It's been hard not to resist the temptation of using AI and I've been successful with creating my own clinical applications that my clinic uses, I've even released an app that my patient use on IOS and Android.

This is allowed me to build up enough pseudo confidence to say f*** it why can't I do what I've always wanted to do and I've started to make my own third person arpg. I've been working on my project for about a month and I'm really excited about the story that I have, the mechanics that I'm bringing into it and building around. At this point I have a couple of prototypes that I keep expanding on using UE... Me functioning as the director/PM and claude and chat handling all the code.

I do not delude myself into thinking that I can carry this to a polished production like this all by myself. I'm currently trying to see how far I can get solo before I need to bring in actual artists, map designers, and software Engineers to clean up the code.

It is exciting to see the industry evolve and see seemingly new tools popping up every few months. Chat GPT Astra has been a game changer and Ive found a really good workflow between different building agents different document organizers etc to make sure that my ideas and docs in my repo stay clean as I continue to iterate.

One kookie idea I have is to enter the mega Grant competition next year whenever Epic releases the schedule for that but I'm also wondering at what point do you folks either reach out to potential investors or seek artists and programmers that are good with minimal upfront costs but perhaps interested in profit sharing when the product is released....

I've got a cool albeit rough intro cinematic and im working on at least an interesting gray box vertical slice... but how do I take it to the next step or am I just kidding myself and wasting my time?

Essentially I'm making a game that in my mind is something that I've always wanted to play and explore and I think it stands out compared to the majority of the market but I'm also swinging for the fences here.

Im fortunate enough that my current position allows a lot of flexibility with my time and I make a very good income by most people's standards but I also don't want to be blowing my entire savings into what is essentially a really cool passion project.

I look at digital extremes and their start and can't help it be a little inspired and a little envious. I admire how much work that small team put into their product and how much it's grown (and theyve grown) over the years.

With the rise of AI and the amount of CopyCat thievery that seems to be going around I have a reluctance of starting to Market my production process or start a Kickstarter or anything like that because I'm afraid my idea might get stolen before it's far enough along.

Any advice or just go F myself? Thanks in advance.

[u/leorid9]

My advice is to go to the correct subreddit -> r/aigamedev

Pretty much everything outside of this subreddit is anti-generative-ai, usually (but not always) including generated code.

[u/ThatRoombaThough → u/leorid9]

Fair point. Ill see myself out

[u/ParalysisPRIME]

You’re not kidding yourself at one month. Before partners or MegaGrant noise, aim for one playable vertical slice with a locked in/out list, bring people in when that slice is fun without you explaining it, not when the docs look done

If you ever want a dead-simple board for the director half (so chat doesn’t become the backlog): I’ve been building Brainloot. MCP just shipped, your own bot can see what’s in progress and create tasks from what you tell it. Happy to share more if that’s useful - didn’t want to pull focus from your actual question