When Solo Game Design Fails
By: Jakov Zauzolkov
Tags: Gaming, Game Development, Game Design, Programming, Coding

When Solo Game Design Fails

Lessons from six months of solo game development

About six months ago I had the idea of making my own little game without any prior knowledge. I wanted to learn how to make games, how to finish one, and how to publish it. Now, six months later, I still haven’t been able to finish my game and I’m stuck in development. Throughout the process I discovered several pitfalls to my approach, which I’d like to share with you here.

Please note though, I don’t want you to get discouraged from your project, whether you’re making a game or something else. I just want to share my experience and share what went wrong. Follow your dreams and make something you can be proud of!

The tasks

Being a solo developer is hard. You have a ton of work to do by yourself to make your game unique and in your own style (and also to save some money). If you want to make everything by yourself, you have to program, design, make music, maybe record voices and sounds, and so on. In my case, I was motivated to do everything by myself and it worked quite well, ‘till I hit the first (and key) obstacle:

The lack of knowledge

Every single thing I had to do to make a game I had never done before. So I had to learn everything on my own, mostly by videos or blogs of others. It was very time-consuming to learn without a teacher who can help you or a person with relevant konwledge — but it worked. Slowly my project grew, the game worked, some graphics already were in place and looked good. It seemed that if the game grows further like this, it’ll be finished in no time. But I was wrong. At this point, I didn’t know what could stop me. But now I know: it was me.

The motivation problem

The first steps when programming a game were very motivating and I was encouraged to keep going. But after some time, the steps forward got smaller or even disappeared. It was terribly frustrating to see how things didn’t work how they should and you have to find the problem and then the solution. As a person with zero knowledge, this is hard. You don’t really understand the code you’ve found on the internet (nor how to combine it with what you already have to make the game function properly). But to be real, half of the code you don’t really understand, especially if the code is much more complex than common codes for common things, like a simple player-movement script. During the process of creating your game, you will find bug after bug and your list of things you have to fix gets longer and longer. At this point, a stress test starts: Have you the intention to fix everything, or does your dream collapse? For me, it collapsed, this time. My last obstacle was to create a shop system for my game to create some customization but I just wasn’t able to make one on my own. Neither YouTube nor any blogs were able to help me and my motivation shattered completely. I was so close to my goal of finishing a game but I didn’t have the power to cross the finish line.

Photo by Irvan Smith on Unsplash.

Today, I’m sitting on an unfinished project which lays on my memory card without any motivation on my part to work again on it, sadly. For myself, I’ve found some things I have definitely to change next time which may also help you:

1. Don’t work alone

Among my friends, there are also some computer enthusiasts like me. Besides, some friends can draw and design really well, others have expertise in music and sound. I think you got the point: Get some help! Everything is a lot easier if you’re not the only one who wants to make the game. Furthermore, it will be also a lot faster. You can help each other with problems so your chance to get stuck at some point, like me, gets smaller.

2. Use forums where people are active

Forums are the perfect place to get some help with difficult steps. Some people are already experienced in making games and can help you a lot better than a YouTube tutorial can (even if some tutorials are very good). You just have to find a forum with people interested in making and programming games and believe me, there are a lot out there.

3. Have fun

Don’t think about publishing and maybe marketing your game. You should see it as practice, a fun project with some friends. If the game is on a good way and you think it might be ready to be published, then it’s time to think about publishing and marketing. If you already start to think about these things at the very beginning or even start this project with the hopes to get rich from it…you’ll probably end up like me. You just set yourself under huge pressure which will affect your motivation and perseverance. If you make this game for fun you’ll take failures a lot easier and it won’t get so frustrating.

Photo by James Harrison on Unsplash.

I hope I could help you in any way with my failing and the things I realized everyone should avoid if he or she wants to program a game. Of course, this is just my point of view on this theme, maybe some more experienced game developers would say that solo developing is better or making a game is easy. And that is okay, people have special opinions on a theme based on their own skills. In the end, I’d say, make your own experiences and look at what works better for you and what you should better avoid.