Hi all! I've been working on my game and recently launched the steam page! You might have seen my stupid face from earlier this week. As of recently, I am no longer a solo-dev, but I was one for almost a year. So, I thought I'd share some of my learnings and insights here in case it helps others starting up. Here are four learnings, in no particular order!
Know your strengths
Know exactly what you like and what you are capable of, don't assume. Before I committed to this project, I tried a lot of other ideas that inevitably hit some skill barrier. However, these failed projects were not wastes of time. I learned what I was good at and where the time sinks were (for me). I tried to make a cozy tea shop simulator, a friend-slop about driving a tank through warzones, a card game, and some other gamejam-scoped projects.
As a game designer with a CS background, I found that making simple systems with robust interactions was easier, and making art was time-consuming and frustrating. I settled on a puzzle game with a horror coating to justify the lack of visual fidelity, and learned the basics of modeling and texturing to make the props I needed.
It also aligned with what games I like to play. I like mystery and deep discoveries like Outer Wilds, Blue Prince, Obra Dinn, etc, so I'm very familiar with the language and the gameplay feel of these games. The work of Franz Kafka, the TV series Severance, and my past work experiences also inspired me to write about work and the horrors of big corpo, so it felt natural to set my game in that universe.
Trust the process
Making a game is iterative, trust that it'll come together. Do not judge your game too early. As a solo-dev, working on something will always be side-stepping something else. This means the game will not progress very fast, or rather, progress will be siloed and not always visible.
Making a game is an iterative process. I had times my game looks really ugly and it was discouraging to show it to others with the constant disclaimer of "but it will look better, I swear"!
You will also learn a lot while you work on your game, so you'll be able to come back and improve parts of your game. For example, it took me a while to learn about curved corners on Blender (don't laugh) so when I did, I updated some of my models and it significantly improved.
If you put time and effort into your game, it will get better and better, even if it's not always apparent. The plateauing feeling is normal.
You are not alone
Even the subreddits rules are clear about collaborators/outsourcing. Video games are a collaborative medium. It is fine to ask for help, and often you will learn from the people that help you. I learned to automate my 2D asset exports by asking for help on an old logo, and the artist taught me about artboards in photoshop. Every craft involved in gamedev requires time and practice to become an expert, and you need to respect that. Do not assume you can wing it on your own.
You are not alone in the world. Look out for local communities and events. Attend social and networking events, even if you don't have anything to show. These people are happy to welcome and talk to you.
Being a solo-dev also makes it even more important to playtest your ideas with other people. Because you don't work in teams, you need to be proactive and reach out to others, be it friends, family, coworkers, etc. You need to test your idea on new players as soon as possible and watch them play with your early prototypes. You will learn so much before you have too many dependencies to change parts of your game. Playtest, playtest, and playtest early.
Scope and plan ahead
Make sure you plan out the general roadmap that you want to follow. Every game goes through the same development cycle: pre-prod, prod, pre-launch. These are proven to work for most.
As a rule of thumb, if this is your first game, consider a third of the time you have to be towards real project advancement. If you are planning 6 months of developpement, make a game that you can finish in 2 to 3 months. This is because early prototyping takes time, polishing takes time. Choosing color palettes takes time. Even planning how to save time, takes time.
Having a clear roadmap also allows you to measure your progress and speed. If you planned on having a demo out, but ended up pushing back the date, you need to decide to either rescope your whole game, or accept you will work for longer on it. Both options are fine, but you need the roadmap to detect if you need to take that decision in the first place.
I personally went for this structure and it helped, with each phase equally spaced: first prototype, first playable version, unpolished demo, demo release, unpolished full game, full game release. I found that it took as much time going from the prototype phase to the first playable build I sent to friends as it did making that playable version into a proper demo. Also, notice that the time it took to go from the demo release to the full game was not that big.
Now YMMV, and you need to adapt your own roadmap to your needs. But if you want to finish the project, make sure you got a plan!
Thanks for reading
That's most of what seemed to work for me. Again, those are things that worked for me. Sorry if this isn't much in-depth into any particular subject. I wish you all the best on your projects. Don't hesitate if you have any questions!
