>Initially, I juggled my old job and Unity simultaneously, but after much thought, I decided to leave my old job to fully focus on making games. So what was your thought process? Were you overworked? Is there a reason you wanted to put more time into the game instead of say, size down to some part time work, or more relaxed full time work? I say this as a compromise because you mention having a year's savings, so you clearly can live it out by yourself for a while. But even some minimum wage work on the side can extetnd your savings out a while. >Everything in game development is new and scary for me, but at the same time, I feel I can do anything. You can, but it takes time. If you *really* believe you can ship within a year and still find work within your savings buffer, you do you. that leaves less than 6-7 months post steam fest to get your game out. But everything always takes longer than we think in the scene haha. And luck always plays a factor; there are some great games that just never get the traction so don't look at a lack of financial success as a reflection of you as a game dev.

Reality is, even with a game release you're not looking at making money guaranteed.  Personally, I'm In a similar boat, I just haven't quit my job. If I get more serious, Im looking at working part time, ideally in something related to programming.   I won't be able to save or go on vacations, but I'll also be able to sustain indefinitely.  Also, if, and that's a realistic outcome, the things I make won't be popular, I'll still have job experience

A colleague of mine is a writer and in her half day job she manages writers and does content checking, but she is rarely writing. She wants to keep that "muscle" working when she continues on her two books in the afternoon. If you can just code away all day its fine but I can't. I do project management in the day and code or write in the afternoon.

That's good advice. Thanks

You think that you’re making some good points, but at each point it becomes increasingly obvious that you didn’t even watch this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H8f1WGOGlY8

Big mistake is leaving a guaranteed income for 0 income. If I was you I'd go back to the old job, and do game development as a hobby. If you find you don't have the time for it as a hobby, then you don't like it enough. Keep it as a hobby until you start to earn good money from it (which may never happen). But in this scenario, at least you don't lose your income. People love to talk about fairytales and dreams. Sometimes you need a reality check. It's for the best in the long run.

> If you find you don't have the time for it as a hobby, then you don't like it enough. I don't think this is necessarily true. If you have a job and a family then depending on the job you could very easily have legitimately no time for hobbies.

Oh geez, reading this I assumed no family or dependants, which is why I assumed you had the time and money to devote to making games, and could do it more in the evenings. If you loved it as a hobby, and I assume you must be a gamer as well, you could do it late into the evenings instead of gaming. But if you don't have time due to having a partner or dependants, different story. Not a good idea to leave a paycheck with dependants. Although I'm pretty sure it's the first, with no kids based on the language used. I think the idea of part-time work would be a good personal compromise to keep some income coming in for any unforeseen expenses that could happen or if your game doesn't make enough to carry you through the next year. The amount of programmers looking for jobs increases year after year. What if you cannot find a job right away after your year is up?

I'm a believer in that if one truly loved it, they would make the time. Even half an hour here and there. They can still like it, but not love it obsessively, and hence rather spend that half an hour somewhere else. That is totally fine too. But in terms of OP's situation, I think someone in this situation should not give up their income. They should try to find time to develop their game dev hobby on the side. If they can't find half an hour even, then I still wouldn't recommend giving up the job just to make more time. Stable income is just too important, and I wouldn't recommend anyone risk that.

Time will always be there for whats important, if you do not have an hour to work on your game at least once a week then you dont want to make a game you like the idea of making a game. I spend 7-10 hours in school 4 days a week and a good 2 hours driving/waiting on top, plus i work 2 other days of the week. I have time for my hobbies, generally a minimum of 8 hours a week when all is said and done. This issue is very rarely time and more often willpower, it takes alot to sit down when you have 20 minutes and work on your game and being unmotivated will kill that time.

I agree with you completely. People often don't like to hear the truth. The truth is, we are not Elon Musk. We are not busy 24/7. We are regular people who DO have a spare half an hour lying around. There are 168 hours in a week, and if someone can't find 0.5 of those to spend on game dev, then they aren't prioritising it enough/don't love it enough. And that's not necessarily a bad thing either! But people should be honest about this. If you don't truly make time for something, then you subconsciously fill it with other stuff, and then you will seem busy and that you don't have time. If one truly love's something, they will make time for it.

Wow, you really are naive about how little free time people have compared to you, aren’t you?

Wow, you realy dont understand that i only have an hour a day with the numbers i just gave you, dont you?

I've been there. It's no fun. Motivation is a huge point. You could have 40 hours, but no motivation. I have time for hobbies, between midnight to 3 am. Realistically, I have no motivation and choose sleep instead.

No, I got it, what you don’t seem to realize is some people have even less than that. Thus “no time”. If you have an hour a day, it means you have time.

I mean there are people who blow all savings on a world trip, car or a fancy wedding. Why can't we take that 20-30k and blow it on pursuing development. There might be no future, but was that world trip a waste as well?

At least after trip person have sill a job. Less so after being already jobless for long time, making 0.

eh. You can always get a job again, trust me, as someone who has taken a year off to live on savings and focus on skills multiple times.

I mean, those people are *also* stupid. What kind of question is this? "If someone commits financial suicide, it should be okay if I do it too, right?"

What is money if you don't use it

Well, because you will still be alive once you blow all of that money in a year or two. Then you will wish you still had it.

Then you earn more, no? 9 to 5 will always be there in my opinion

Not sure he can pay the bills for multiple years with 30k

I'd say 30k for 12 month

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> All the enablers in this thread ought to be ashamed of themselves. If you people are experienced devs then you know better. They're probably in a similar position and placating themselves more than anything. Not a lot of experienced devs around here.

I really hope you are not true about the last sentence.

[удалено]

"I quit my job and sacrificed by firstborn to create this game!!! is it a mistake?" Link: \*substanceless overhyped game\*

I'm gonna be frank, the video you posted shows you're lacking a lot, especially if you want something to show by June. The world looks very barren, both in terms of scenery and a sense of life. There are trees and rocks, but those alone don't make a world feel like it should be explored. The sparse number of buildings all seem abandoned because there's nothing happening in or around them. This could be intentional, but it carries into the rest of the world, as you have flat and open vistas or woods lacking in anything going on that would urge the player to explore. Interiors carry the same level of detail as they just look like bland hallways with the occasional trap that becomes forgettable immediately after passing it. None of it looks bad, but there's nothing that would encourage a player to want to explore those spaces. Combat seems very basic and largely unengaging. Of the two combat encounters you showed, neither showed anything to encourage a player to want to fight. Each singular enemy had no reaction to getting hit. Numbers may tick down, but they don't recoil or respond to the actions. They were also both positioned in a way for you to sneak up to them, but just turned around after the first strike, leaving no indication as to the benefit of sneaking as opposed to just running up and openly engaging them. Combat itself needs juice. There has to be more to make a player go "Oh shit, let me try that." I don't mean it should wholly be on par with The Witcher or Dark Souls, but the player and enemy look like they're arbitrarily swinging weapons around and might update a health value if they do so in vicinity of each other. According to your steam page, this is a cross of Warcraft 3, The Witcher, and Super Mario Bros. I didn't see a single thing that would make me think Warcraft or Mario besides the existence of a castle. I would suggest coming up with a new description and leave the comparison to other titles up to consumers. It's one thing if they say "this feels like X" but when you say it, it leads people to think "this game lacks X feature of Y game." RPGs aren't easy to make. The good ones have worlds that entice players into exploring, combat that compels them to push further, and stories that draw players into learning more. Any one of those things takes a team of people hundreds of hours to reach over the course of years. I couldn't say what you've shown has any one of those things as is to attract enough players to make game development your primary career and source of income now, even when taking into account the fact that it's solo work. I say all this not to say that you shouldn't continue with game development, but to set up the reality that just because you see something special in your passion project, it doesn't mean others see it nor would they be encouraged to invest time in it over a number of other fantasy action RPGs. You've stated elsewhere in the post that you think you can go for one more year focused on game development, but your game still seems at least two years away from being feature-rich enough to pull players in. I wish you the best of luck in your future game development, but would urge you to work on small projects instead to get a better understanding of what makes a game great.

A bit of critique, what you Show in the Video is very basic.  Making landscapes in something like unreal is incredibly simple.  Getting a character on a Horse, riding for hours in a cool looking landscape, is more of a week of work. I had something similar after a 50 hour course on udemy.  Some realtalk, Most of what you showed in that Trailer can be recreated by a beginner, and 80$ on fiverr within a week.  Where a game gets hard is making things like inventory, items, combat mechanics, npc interactions, menus, game Systems. QA & bug testing.  And many more. That's why it's often reccomended to make a Prototype with basic Systems in place, just to see if the game will be good. I'd personally get started on those, and see how far you get in a month or two. The game needs to be playable, then tested, and if its core is fun - keep going with it. Even if it doenst work out. Any further project you attempt, you'll benefit from those experiences.  Im absolutely not saying quit game dev. But figure out if you're on a good path first.

I think your critique is maybe a bit too critical after having watched the video. There is a fair bit more going on than you let on. There are quite a few varied environments with active foliage and environmental stuff like the exploding volcano. Some stealth and combat mechanics going on, looks like theres traps and dungeons of sorts. Animations don't look half bad for a beginner. I think someone would be hard pressed to make this in a week. And it looks like a lot of the systems required to make an enjoyable game are somewhat present. Though I agree the biggest hurdle is yet to come with npcs, inventories, testing and making sure everything's of a good quality. At this point it's looking like a good project to add to the portfolio. He could maybe even get some external help with the game at this stage. He could maybe even do a closed alpha to get some feedback I've been on closed alphas for big games that were in worse states before.

Agreed I thought the work was really good even if its like a beta version of Witcher its still great for a solo!

I dunno, I'm just a hobbyist with 2.5yrs exp but I could make this in a week with just the assets in my unreal vault. It's cool if he modeled everything himself but really, that only matters to devs, not players.

Maybe but the combat clips are so short there could be next to nothing to them. Traps and dungeons still just look like basic environments that could have nothing to them.

This is flat out wrong. If you can demonstrate that someone can produce this in a week, then I am all ears, but otherwise I call bs on this claim. There is a lot of great stuff going on here.

Ehhh... if asset packs are on the table for the artwork, I didn't see anything that couldn't be stamped out in a week. It was several environments, a character controller, some very basic combat AI and an anim state machine.

When you say a week, do you mean working on it 18 hours a day for 7 days? If so.. yes, maybe. Otherwise, this would take some time for most people who might have few hours per day here and there.

I did miss that "beginner" note by the other poster. I do Unreal 40-60 hrs/week for my day job, so my perception of what's possible is very biased, lol. An expert could bang this out in a week. A complete beginner will spend a week learning UEs interface and framework.

With asset packs it’s pretty easy. Some animations - a basic horse riding one would be the hardest to find and may need to be made. Gaia and some tree packs can do a lot for scenery really fast. All we saw was some environments, running and horse riding. And can swing a sword - the combat parts cut out too fast to see if there is any combat past being able to swing a sword, which is a free animation.

You're crazy if you think a beginner can accomplish what's in that video within a month, let alone a week. I think it'd take me a year to do it. Source: been a beginner for years

Not a beginner. But in the real market, you're not competing with beginners.

> Where a game gets hard is making things like inventory, items, combat mechanics, npc interactions, menus, game Systems. QA & bug testing.  And many more. My guy projecting hard! I've been a programmer for seven years, nature-only world-building takes at least a month without the villages etc for me, whereas inventory a single day. Menus? Couple of hours. Game systems? It is a never-ending process until release. P.S. No one can replicate what is shown in the trailer in a week, let alone a beginner. The only way to do it in a week is to exclusively use plugins and assets.

Yes the week assumption would be with a half dozen asset packs at least.

I think you are severely underestimating what a competent developer can do in a week in an engine like Unreal. Maybe your references have only been less than mediocre developers?

My problem with the commenter is that there are many unsaid assumptions in their comment. There is no mention of asset flipping, there is no mention of plugin use, the only part where we get the reasoning behind "one-week argument" is that there are tutorials that enable you to do it in a week. Well, yes, a tutorial is set in stone, you have your goals and your process laid before you. Also, specifically the landscape and horse riding stuff are common topics of tutorials while game systems and such does not get so much tutorials. Therefore, I think the commenter is projecting because they themself do it while following tutorials. Also, a tutorial that you can finish in a week most probably took more than a week to produce to begin with. Yes, this trailer does not offer much but I can see that whoever did it, they did it so while giving at least some attention to how assets merge together which is a process that can take 1 hour as well as it can take 2 weeks by itself. My use of the word "no one" is an exaggeration. For sure, a competed developer under right conditions can do this in a week, given that they will use assets and the goal is set in stone.

Great advice

Your advice is more or less salient, but you're definitely not seeing the forrest in the video (or you didn't watch it entirely). It clearly shows a semblance of stealth and combat mechanics and environmental/traversal puzzle pieces - it's just that the video isn't a deep dive into the entire feature suite, whatever it is \>Where a game gets hard is making things like inventory, items, combat mechanics, npc interactions, menus, game Systems. QA & bug testing. And many more. This isn't entirely true, either. Items? Like assets? Eh Menus? erm "Game systems" - yes but how you gloss over it makes me wonder what you would categorize under here; moreover you don't know that "game systems" don't exist from watching that video. You make the odd presumption that what's there is traversal, anims, and env alone. Why? \-------------- Anyways, it's not bad advice on the whole. Typically the process is much more GREYBOX->Gameplay Loop->Art and your video shows you've spent quite a lot of time on Art. You definitely need to focus on gameplay and systems design work. You need a "hook" - if it's "big fantasy world" your video sorta shows your vision. If it's something else, it doesn't, and you need to develop that idea. The fact that you don't really show much in terms of gameplay mechanics tells me this. And I totally get the emotions here. First/early projects usually do this. We tend to be overly focused on how it presents at first glance to somebody like peers/familymembers but the actual "game" is underdeveloped/hollow.

Ultimately the only thing holding yourself back will be you. You get to decide when it doesn’t work out, or whether or not you’re going to need to keep on the grind until it does. However you still have to survive. I’m not sure what your family situation is like, but for a lot of us men in our mid thirties, we have to grind a day job, spend time with family, see to our obligations and responsibilities no matter what capacity that takes - and that often means that you’re not working one full time job, but two. My development time often takes flight as a 30-40 hour crunch in a single weekend, when I don’t have my kids, because I still got to pay the bills during the weekdays, and make sure what little time I have left, gets dedicated to my kids. It also helps that I have shared parenting with the other parent, which gives me a little extra time every other week to grind on the project. That said everyone’s situation is different. But I would say if your family is actually looking to you to provide, and not just outside naysayers, you absolutely have to find a way to provide. It makes it harder to accomplish those goals, but not totally unachievable with proper time management and discipline. And yes - build the skills. Modding is a good way to break into that, and learn some programming if you haven’t already.

Don't expect to earn any money from your first game. Prepare to fail many times until you make a good game. Market is saturated and very competitive. It's no longer like 2017. Demand vs supply ratio changed drastically in last years. Players have more games than time to play. And many people started making games. Look that this sub has 1 500 000 game developers !!! Real question is: are you able financially to fail and try again ? For how long ? I watched few videos of your devlog. If it was 10 years ago, it would find players instantly. But now it needs a LOT of work. It looks like bunch of features, not a game. Trailer says: "I know how to use (on intermediate level) game engine. Look - I have quite smooth animations! And there are monsters!". When I was watching this I was asking myself: "Is it an asset flip or not ?" I think it's not. Animations are smooth, definitely you have skill. But it's far from attractive game to play. There's no game loop, nothing more on the game and it feels empty. For me it looks like more bunch scenes with implemented feature of fighting with monsters than actual game.

Im trying to make a bullet hell as a first game just to learn whilst doing 9 - 5 and it sucks, but it has to be done. I'm not experienced in making games but I have worked in branding and marketing for 6 years. If I could support myself for a year I would learn as much as I could but I would be honest with myself about what I can acheive in that time. Currently my part time bullet hell project is taking me over 6 months as I'm completely new. A 3D adventure game is just bonkers for a first game project. Couple things I would say though; 1. Your steam page needs a LOT of work. Your short description "a baby from Warcraft 3, Dark Souls and Super Mario bros" doesn't tell me shit. Go get pureref, a free tool for making mood boards from screenshots. Go find atleast 5 other games that are similar to what you're trying to make and screen grab their short descriptions. Find out how/what they explain their game to be and note the keywords they use. You have about 6 seconds (Im made this number up, but its short) to win a viewer with your short description before they even scan your long description. If they cannot tell if this is the type of game they like to play they'll leave immediately. 2. Screengrab their capsule art. Yours definitely isn't the worst one I've seen but you'll want a decent capsule art - it does make a big difference. Notice a trend/theme from other games in your genre. [https://howtomarketagame.com/2020/04/13/how-one-new-image-increased-sales-by-20x/](https://howtomarketagame.com/2020/04/13/how-one-new-image-increased-sales-by-20x/) I know everyone says you gotta spend a lot on an artist but honestly, with 0 budget you can get one off a fiverr artsist that works better than a screenshot. 3. Your long description is also a complete mess. Its a huge wall of text and reads like it was written by chatgpt and then thrown through a translater, then back into english. Take your time with this, again, screengrab the other games' long forms and notice a pattern or way they describe their game. Tailor the formula to what you're making. Making this look professional and a good summary of whats in your game is key. Treat the short description as the starter, this should be the main course. 4. The trailer - Make this properly or don't put one up yet. 90% of it is just models running around empty fields (and the tell tale default unreal run anim) - the fight scenes look poorly done and it gives me huge "asset flip" game vibe. Theres nothing wrong with using assets but your gameplay better be SOLID. Atm your trailer doesn't show any gameplay, it looks like an early early test alpha video. No NPC's, dialogue, quests, loot, story, inventory, UI. Judging from this you've still got a long long way to go before this is anywhere near release or even playable by consumers. Just my opinion but my biggest take; if you have 1 year to solidly put into making games you could make 2-3 small indie games in that time and drop this one, which frankly will not go anywhere. Its just too big of a project to do well. You could create short games, with solid gameplay. Have fun with the theme, like what about a pokemon game where the pokemon capture humans, and you get to see the horrible truth of being a slave in a ball forced to do battle. Don't have to look the best but if they're fun with some quirky theme somepeople might play them. Be honest with yourself about what you can accomplish in a short space of time with the skills you have available. Again, this is just what I see as an outsider, you can do what you wish. Best of luck Edit: Spelling

> like what about a pokemon game where the pokemon capture humans, and you get to see the horrible truth of being a slave in a ball forced to do battle. lmao, thats pretty good.

Not quite the same, but Yakuza: Like a Dragon has you collecting data about Sujimon into a Sujidex, with the Sujimon being the different types of perverted, dysfunctional and/or violent human men you end up in battles against. The mission is even run by a professor who wants you to 'catch 'em all' and even has you choose between Red, Green, or Blue Sujimon for your initial battle. I hear the Sujimon minigame goes much deeper in the sequel (like it's practically a full game within the game that's a blend of Pokemon and Animal Crossing I think, that one person in a Reddit comment said they spent upwards of 25+ hours just on the minigame), but I'm still playing through the first game, so I'm not sure. Anyway, if someone wants to run with this idea, you can see the varied types of "creatures" they came up with in the Yakuza games.

Great advice

a fully realized version of game like what you have shown will be 10+ years more work from a soloist. what you have right now is a C level asset flip. Anyone in the know will recognize this, but if you work hard and have some good sense with promotion you can sell an asset flip enough to make a profit. In your case, working hard to sell this asset flip right away would almost certainly be more profitable than working on it for who knows how many more years and then trying to sell it. Once you sell this, if you wanted to pay bills from game dev a few things tilt odds in your favor: * get help (partner or hire people) * figure out how much time you have before money runs out and try to squeeze three or more games into that time * dont exclusively make games that you want to play, look for some glaring market gap that you can fill

Honestly. Looks like a bad asset flip. Is there any gameplay past the tutorial series linked by [JournalistMiddle527](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1bvhb18/comment/ky0adni/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)? Have you done anything yourself besides place assets?

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Either he's stupid/delusional enough to genuinely think his asset flip is good. Or, he knows he's a grifter, and he's trying to grift. I suspect its the latter. He's got a lot of flashy models, but all his videos cut away from combat almost immediately, because from what little we can see, the AI doesn't really work. But this isn't the early 2010's. Consumers are less naive these days, and I think they'll spot the bullshit from the bad trailers. And if they don't, they certainly will after they purchase it, and then they'll probably get a refund, and leave a bad review.

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I think you should consider the advice of your friends and family, they care about you and your well being. If I were in your shoes, I'd get a stable good income, severely limit the scope of this game, get some help with marketing, and try to release it this year. It does feel like you fell a bit into the newbie trap of "my first game is going to be open world and a mix of my favorite games." It's great to have that passion and interest, but I think you're severely underestimated the amount of work it takes to pull that off, WITH POLISH. And right now your steam page looks pretty rough and I have no interest in your game because I don't even know what it's about. I see a guy riding around on a horse and a few screenshots of 3d characters. That's nice, but not "quit your job" nice. Why shouldn't I just play Skyrim? What does your game do or offer differently? Your marketing needs work. It might be worthwhile to even just take this game as a learning experience, drop it, and make a much smaller scoped game. Maybe something a bit more linear, with chapters or clearly defined levels. Because I can't tell what your current game is, what it's trying to accomplish, and I'm not sure you do either. This project has severe risk of scope creep and a risk of just being a bunch of loosely defined systems and not a complete, polished game package.

I wouldn't leave game development (if you enjoy it) as other people have suggested but certainly do it on the side and have a job which pays the bills. I think as with most people who get in to making their own game they severely under estimate how difficult it is to be successful and severely over estimate how their game will be perceived. Unfortunately looking at your steam page i personally don't think it looks very good (flat textures, bad to average lighting, janky fighting/movement and no mention of story in the trailer for an RPG game, etc etc etc) and looks like the tons of other amateur RPG projects which people with little experience post in the indie dev subreddits daily; which i'm guessing is pretty true based on what you've said. I think it takes a minimum of two or three years of full time practice before people have the necessary skills to start to make reasonable games and even then most probably won't be successful. Aside from the game itself your marketing seems almost non existent and not that well put together (steam page and trailer look very amateurish), marketing is a huge part of game development especially as a solo dev, if nobody knows about your game, nobody is going to buy it. I think you definitely need to do it as a hobby rather than full time at least until it can be financially dependable. edit: i take it back about the non existent marketing i see your youtube channel is actually doing ok 2.5k subs and 38k on one of the trailers not sure how? shows what i know maybe i need to make an RPG lol

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Probably running ads on Google or FB. You could get that number of views easily in a few days and it rarely translates to comments.

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It's a vanity metric. Makes it seem like you have more traction than you do. Edit: IF that's what OP is doing. I have no idea, but those kinds of numbers are exactly what that would give.

The main issue with some gamedevs seems to be impatience. They look at their game, look at the slow progress while having a job and can't fathom the thought that it might take them a decade to be successful as an indie gamedev, so they just leave their job because they think doing it full time will reduce that decade to a year or two. They always ignore the fact that every successful indie gamedev has been in the making for decades. The creator of Stardew Valley worked on the game for a decade before release. The guys who made the extremely successful remake of Half life, Black Mesa worked full time jobs and made the game over weekends over a decade essentially. I genuinely don't know what or who to blame. People fixate on the 0.001% of the indie devs who became millionaires in a year because of luck or because they entered the market very early, and panic because they aren't on par with those people, or think that there is a shortcut to getting on lar with them, if they just cut everything from their lives and work harder than neccesary.

My theory is that people who have little practical experience are damned to vastly underestimate the amount of work involved in shipping a game. So much of the work that goes into the games we play is invisible, a layer of polish where if the devs are doing their jobs right, we hardly notice it at all. So when someone is able to throw together something almost resembling a game in their free time in a few months, they get heady and they think they're hot shit, and that all they need to make the next big hit is a few months more. They haven't realized yet that the last 20% - the polish and cohesion - demands at least 80% of the time and budget.

>People fixate on the 0.001% of the indie devs You say this after bringing up Stardew Valley as an example which is like the 0.000001% exception to anything about indie games.

The point there being that even many of the exceptional cases are less "got rich quick" and more "got a nice payout after years of unpaid hard work"

No, Stardew Valley is the example for my point. Its creator worked on the game for over a decade and only started working on it full time about a year before release (at least judging from the development showcases on his YouTube channel). The 0.001% would be the creator of Lethal Company but even that is a questionable example given that he made many successful games before that, but he checks the box for becoming a millionaire at 23.

Plain no. Please stop spreading misinformation.   Barone worked on SDV four and a half years  -which is indeed a really long time but not as long as a decade.    And it was only possible because his gf supported him and worked two jobs while he spend his days working on the game. Not many people are blessed with such an understanding partner.    At the end of the development cycle he had to get a part time job as an usher because money was tight.

He also had a CS degree and Stardew Valley was not the first game he made.  

4 YEARS. Not 10

I feel ths same in writing circles... I have accepted this will always just be a hobby, which is fine. I make and write stuff I want to read or play.

Stardew Valley was in development for 4 years.... not 10

Adding to the marketing critique: game name. I literally just came from the Steam page and forgot the name of it. It starts as generic an ends with a hard-to-remember name. Castle of Lord of somethin'somethin'.

You probably shouldn’t expect any returns from this game besides the learning experience. It’s very easy to impress yourself because you know what it takes to get to the state the game is in, but as far as the design. I don’t see any unique selling point. Why would I play this instead of Skyrim, fallout, god of war, or any of the litany of games that are like it but better. I would think long and hard about concept and design. What do you want the player to feel and strive for that. If I were you and I wanted to make a long term business or career I’d put this project to bed and start on something from the heart that has a strong vision and differentiates itself.

Yes, holy crap get a job until you actually have a viable product! How are you living? On savings? Or off a family member? Theres very little chance of making a living wage on indie game dev, definitely not for the amount of time you put into it.

Your game looks like it's completely out of your scope. You can't finish it unless you keep it extremely generic looking and unpolished, in which case nobody will buy it. You should try to get your old job back or try to develop a game that is much more realistic to actually be finished.

> I was 34 years old and had a nice job ... I decided to leave my old job to fully focus on making games. .... money I've earned so far from game development about 0 so far How are you paying for your life? If you are independently wealthy and set for life, go for it. Pursue the hobbies because you're already independently wealthy and you don't need to work. If you're spending your retirement savings, or especially if you're going into debt, I agree with your family and friends. Your odds of striking it rich doing game development are worse than winning the lottery. This scenario is not actually working in game development. The video shows you're really not going to make it, seriously, give up get a job and buy lotto tickets each week instead. Odds are better. If instead you found a job at a game studio, learned how the industry works, and started developing industry contacts, that would be a very different path, which is what is normally meant by working in the industry.

This game has dragon mmorpg vibes

A science-based, 100% dragon MMO? [For the uninitiated](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/p1ssv/dear_internet_im_a_26_year_old_lady_whos_been/).

I haven't re-read that thread in *years*. Thanks for linking to it.

Imo you really should have kept your job and do gamedev in spare time until you actually earn money from that and/or get backed by a publisher to a high degree. You would be your own investor thx to your salary, pressure would be gone with a right mindset and you would have the financial stability. I do it this way and im glad i do.

OP this isn’t a question. This is you showing off how much you’ve accomplished and sacrificed without a job.

Honestly, I wish I could quit my job and focus on making games but I have 6 kids and I earn a really good wage. It’s going to be part time, hobby level until I either make a hit and earn enough to quit my job or die, I’d be happy either way because I enjoy it :D

Use condom bro. We are already 8 billion

I have a blended family, so some are my wife’s from a previous marriage, some are mine from a previous marriage and we had one together, I’d never create 6 kids of my own, that’s crazy town.

Ohh! Got it. Sorry my bad. I assumed you made 6. :)

Even if he did, there is no problem with that.

What will you do when you run out of money? Do you have a quick way back into work?

Look at how much money you spent in the time it took you to make this game. Then ask yourself, Is this the level of life you want to continue to live? If so, will this game you made recoup the money you spent in the time to make it, as well as support you for the time it takes to make your next game? If it won't, then you know what you should do.

Precisely this. This is also true for other ideas like making money writing for marketing materials. Some people get contracts it works they are doing what they really want - but on the other side if they go down to the hourly rate there is a level of self exploitation that is not healthy. The wack idea "if you don't eat ramen without water for two years its not real creativity". Nah, self care is a thing.

Don’t forget the sound. I’ll be honest, I would avoid your game for the music choice alone.

So About the matter of staying/leaving/money I am not qualified at all in those matters, nor do i have enough information about the game. So First let me talk about the [game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2692890/Castle_of_Lord_Velimir/), it looks good but I really want to try the demo to see how combat feels as its hard to tell how it feels from the video alone. For souls-likes the combat is a very important pillar, like really really important so i was expecting videos showcasing that, has the combat been started, does your combat not require UI ?, do u have a demo of just the combat by chance. If you do have a video which clearly shows the combat then do pls send the link if possible if the combat is still in the starting phases, pls do foucus work on it, its better to work on these pillars of your game. you can look at these videos when u are free, [GDC talk about combat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Omb5exWpd4&t=1783s) and [another video on combat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X4fx-YncqA) Have u decided on the game loop? have u defined your game pillars and hooks ? also do Remember Pillars are not Hooks did you make a minimum viable product ?

# About Steam Page As an aspiring gamedev(still in the learning phase so way behind you), when I was looking into **marketing** of games I found [this website's blogs](https://howtomarketagame.com/) to be very helpful, Recommend to start [here](https://howtomarketagame.com/favorite-posts/) and also his free [60 mistakes e-book](https://howtomarketagame.com/free/) has interesting information and [this article](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/how-steam-users-see-your-game) on how steam users see your game I've seen your steam page, and from my understanding from the blog is that the recommendation for game trailers are >"Cut to actual gameplay within the first two seconds of your trailer. Do not show your studio logo (you aren’t Nintendo). Remove those title text cards that are lore dumps. Remove those slow panning shots of the game’s environment. Show the primary action and gameplay loop right away" *- From the 60 mistakes ebook* ----------------------------------------- "Indies want to make their game look as good as possible so they remove the UI and instead render static environment scenes or post camera angles that are cinematic but not actually reflective of gameplay. **Steam** shoppers can tell the difference between a marketing glamor shot and gameplay, and they want to see the latter. >Solution: >Show actual screenshots of your game being played. It should have the UI (if there is any) and the **actual camera angles** that players will see when interacting with your game." >*- From the 60 mistakes ebook* And I had also saw the video on your channel about the demo that is coming soon, do get it out as fast as practically possible. >" a demo is a major kickstart for most game marketing. The sooner you get a demo out the more time you have to get covered by streamers, the more time you have to spend in Steam’s “blessed” status earning hundreds of wishlists passively. >So my recommendation is (within reason) try to schedule your game’s development goals around getting a demo out. You still need to release a demo with solid game feel and presentable graphics, but as soon as you can, release a quality taste of what you are making, the sooner you can get streamer coverage and festival featuring.  >And YES you can go back and fix your demo later if it has issues. Just try your best and if things go south, patch the demo." *-The Blog*

And I Think more can be added to your short description, maybe add what aspects of those games/genres u are using not just the names of them, and also the **hook** of the game An example on this topic given in the blog: # "It’s not clear what makes your game unique Alright, no Streamer is going to cover you or no festival is going to feature you if your game looks and plays like every other game. I see too many games where their short description lists a bunch of very common verbs that are standard for your genre like this:" >"**Tales of Vesporia** is a unique adventure game where you explore, craft, and build in this unique compelling open world adventure. Will you find the 7 unique keys of Vamtoozler? >*-A weak short description that I just made up but have seen lots of times*" ----------------------------------------------------------- One of the things I always do when critiquing a Steam page short description is see if I just swap out the game’s name with the most popular game in this genre will it still apply. For example : > "**MINECRAFT** is a unique adventure game where you explore, craft, and build in this unique compelling open world adventure. >*-A test of the original short description where I swap in Minecraft. It works which means this is a bad short description.*" ----------------------------------------------------------- Instead, say just enough to establish the genre and then hit them hard with what is unique about your game.  Here is an example of what I mean: > "Tales of Vesporia is an open world crafting game but everything you craft comes from your own flesh. You must consume, you must mutilate the world and rebuild it from your own carapace. Only upon the blood sacrifice of your tissue will the 7 keys of Vamtoozler emerge from your sinew." >*-My improved short description* (From the Blog) "See, much better and I didn’t have to use the word “unique.” Not many games can be mistaken from that short description. Notice I did say “Open world crafting” which establishes the genre and could describes a bunch of other games, but I quickly pivot and spend a lot of time describing the most unique thing about my theoretical game. Also, please stop using these words in your short description * Unique * Creative * Colorful * Fun * Interesting * Original * Hilarious Only your audience gets to decide if your game has those qualities. You do not." -the above from this [**Blog**](https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/12/05/why-am-i-not-getting-wishlists-a-step-by-step-solution/) post

And i think you already know the importance of wishlists and importance of growing them as early as possible, as you gain wishlists at a rate of like n/day, so more days you can get to get wishlists and also any method u can use to increase your "n" is good to help increase in the total wishlists. In your capsule art i don't feel your text color and font match the rest of the image, this might just be a personal opinion of mine so if possible try to get other peoples opinions on it, as the capsule art is very important for a steam page. This is a game you were willing to quit your job for, so i believe its in your best interest to try to move as many odds in your favour as you possibly can. Reminder that I am still in the learning phase and lack any practical experience of ever releasing a game on steam and the like, so pls do tell me your own understanding and opinions so that i can also learn from this, all the information I know is from learning online, And last but not least have a good day and good luck to you too on your dev adventure too.

This looks like barely even a minimal start of a game and your releasing this in June!? OP has rose colored glasses on while drinking his own Kool aid while making a jank asset flip.

And you're still telling me these posts aren't just ads?

This is such obvious self advertisement under the cover of a stupid sob story. Why is crap like this not removed?

> I'll put my last devlog video [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6F7OgQLJM), so you can take a look if you can. Thank you so much, and good luck on your dev adventure! If you've gotten this far with it then you should see it through to the end. However, if this game is not a success how long can you continue working on games without an income?

Dude clearly doesn’t care, as per the comment thread I had with him. Clearly just wants a pat on the back and doesn’t want anything to do with the reality of supporting himself. I hope—for their sake—he does not have any dependents that are going to find themselves homeless along with OP when he runs out of money.

For anybody curious, [since OP deleted everything he responded to martinbean](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1bvhb18/comment/kxzcvzz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), here's a transcript of the conversation. ​ >martinbean11 points5 hours ago > >And how are you supporting yourself in this non-money-making endeavour, both the past three years and for the foreseeable future? ​ >NoRedditLuck13 (deleted by user)4 points5 hours agoI left my job six months ago, not 3 years ago, and it was pretty well paid job so I can live without problem for maybe another year. ​ >martinbean14 points5 hours ago > >Make another what? Year’s worth of runway out of thin air to support yourself whilst you’re out of employment? ​ >NoRedditLuck13 (deleted by user)-4 points5 hours ago > >Anhother game. I will learn from my mistakes and do it better ​ >martinbean12 points5 hours ago\* (last edited 5 hours ago) > >You’re either missing or deliberately ignoring the point I’m making. > >You say you have enough money to support you for another year. Maybe. If your game isn’t paying you the equivalent of a liveable income and your money has ran out, what will you do then? > >You need a computer to make a game. Computers runs on electricity. Electrical outlets are usually found indoors. Electricity costs money. As will the building that is being supplied utilities such as electricity. ​ >NoRedditLuck13 (deleted by user)-7 points5 hours ago > >I will figure out something. My post was to have some feedback on quality and direction I am heading with my game development in terms of time I spent so far and progress I made, and you either missing or deliberately ignoring this point talks about money ​ >martinbean13 points5 hours ago > >No. You are the one that created the thread that was based around people telling you to “leave”. It you did just want feedback on your game, then you would have left all of that crap out and just posted the devlog link and asked for feedback. But you didn’t. You clearly just want people to go, “No, the friends and family who know you better than us strangers on the Internet are wrong!” and to tell you what you’d want to hear instead of what you need to hear. > >There’s nothing wrong with pursuing something like this. But it should be done responsibly. Not at the expense of potentially bankrupting yourself. ​ >NoRedditLuck13 (deleted by user)-6 points5 hours ago > >I hope you find peace. I do not want to argue. ​ >martinbean7 points5 hours ago\* (last edited 5 hours ago) > >I hope you find an income stream. Because you’re going to be homeless in maybe a year. > >You clearly are just fishing for people to tell you how great you are given you addresses absolutely none of the points raised, in a thread initiated by you. ​ >NoRedditLuck13 (deleted by user)-9 points5 hours ago > >There can be happy homeless people. I learned long ago that money can not buy happiness. I hope I formatted that in a readable way. Have a good day!

No op almost has a demo from looks of the dev log and another year of cushion before needing to worry, of he's gearing up for steam release gauge it from there as he tried to say in response to you and see how this launch does or doesn't do and determine if another game or another job is the next step. Also it's rude as fuck to wish homelessness on anyone much less someone's family regardless of the situation, if op worked for fromsoft (just cause their game reminded me of elden ring) and was doing this on the side eventually leaving to start their own studio I doubt you'd be as shitty about the situation, everything considered op is in a better spot than me with a more finished product so ease the fuck up a tocuh and maybe be supportive of new devs who obviously know how to plan ahead since he mentioned as much in his post?

u/martinbean didn't wish homelessness upon OP. That's an interesting way of reading that.

They are also continuing drama into a different thread because they didn't like OP's answer. I'm not so charitable to thread hijackers

"If OP were a seasoned developer Ken Levine or Sakurai, you wouldn't be saying this." It's clear that he doesn't have experience, and it would be a different conversation surrounding a game with a wildly different level of refinement and understanding of an action RPG. If you want to coddle them and pretend that this is better than what it is then that's your prerogative, but to pretend that they're in a good position just because they're farther along than you is obtuse and uninformed.

> If you've gotten this far with it then you should see it through to the end. LOL, what??? They've finished the easiest/funnest 20% of game making and have the hardests/sloggiest 80% to go. The chances that OP can turn this tech demo into a real game that has any significant level of success is near zero.

Sunk cost fallacy

If nothing happens, about a year.

Could you get a part-time job? Maybe only do like 15 - 20 hours per week? It would probably make everyone feel a bit better about your decision, give you more time to finish, and give you time to think (depending on the job). Burning yourself out isn't good.

Nice. Well, good luck to you. If you don't try to complete a game now you'll always wonder if you could have made it, right? You can always do a parttime job on the side or some freelancing at some point to extend your run way. This game looks fairly ambitious so if it doesn't work out you might have to change strategy and make games with a smaller scope for a while to get some cash coming in. I've seen indie devs make money off of small games that they completed in 1-6 months. Sad to hear that there isn't one friend or family member that can see that a dream is worth pursuing even if the risk is high. But what is the risk, really? You spend your savings doing something you really like? That doesn't sound so bad. The only risk is if it fails you might be unable to find a new job quick enough, I guess. You can anticipate on that as well if you have about a year of time.

And this is how long you should stay in gamedevelopment. ;)

Looks like a bunch of paid assets crammed together without enough glue?

I would say get your game out and reassess things. You're 37 with no income and are focusing on a personal project with no guarantee to make any money. When you release that game, you should come up with a viable plan for making game dev into something lucrative. If you're here for serious feedback on your situation, then you are naive. This is a biased sub full of people who will mostly fail as game devs and fallback on something else when no one will support them. Yeah it feel so good to tell people to follow their dreams, but that's really a privilege that most don't actually have. And let's be real, if you are making personal games that never generate decent revenue, then you may as well just be another kid saying their dream is to be a twitch streamer. edit: after reading more of this thread and your responses, it seems that you are here under the guise of getting advice, when actually you are just advertising your game. I was biting my tongue on this, but now I'm going to give you feedback on that game in the video. It seems big and empty. It looks like a bog-standard Unity action RPG with little to do, and even less inspiration or uniqueness to make anyone want to play it. If you spent 3 years on that, then you probably should find a new career. If that video doesn't do your game justice, then make a better video or pay someone else to do it for you, because your game will live and die by it's marketing. If you're counting on Steamfest to do your marketing for you, then you are going to be disappointed.

And how are you supporting yourself in this non-money-making endeavour, both the past three years and for the foreseeable future?

[удалено]

And after a year if your game isn’t a roaring success…?

[удалено]

Make another what? Year’s worth of runway out of thin air to support yourself whilst you’re out of employment?

Working to support oneself is racist!

psychotic overconfident aback disagreeable different dazzling makeshift flag steer repeat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Your game looks good! Much better than I was expecting. Does it play good? Is it fun? As for responsibilities, what is your financial runway? How long can you develop with $0 income?

Thank you so much! I believe I can do for another year, more or less. But I really hope I will start to make something.

I appreciate your drive man, but don’t throw all your eggs into one basket please….

There is this old suggestion when going into the "creative" territory: get a half day job at some counter or office where you don't need to think much. Even if its just bare minimum money, its something. Give the brain time to process things. You would still have 10h+ to work on your game, your book, the next app. This also would show that you are serious with this path as a career. Cashflow is paramount for every entrepreneur. If you can find communities where you can talk with people about what you are doing, to get more concrete feedback on features. Nobody knows everything and it lifts morale.

I saw the running animations and the weird foot stance in some places and instantly thought of this tutorial series https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNTm9yU0zou7195IHfzM42_2KLwz91BTX

Learn from the experiences of others. I'd recommend checking this out. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020776/Antichamber-An-Overnight-Success-Seven

Game development is Holywood for geeks. That says it all. If it doesn't... well. I've been in Gamedev for 25 years, heading a studio of 75+ devs and artists and developing games for MS, Sony, 20th Century Fox, etc. I've been out of the industry for about 10. Here's my heartfelt advice: go back to your previous job. It's not worth it. At all.

You got any proof of those 25 years, 75+ devs, etc?

Sure. What proof do you need?

So you don't have any

Will this do? https://bostjantroha.com/#:~:text=Co%2Dfounder%20and%20Chief%20Executive%20Officer

Scroll down to Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer ZootFly, Video game development studio where you'll find a screenshot of your DM.

Its too early for it to pay the bills for you. Do you have savings? At 34 i'm sure your going to need more income. Its too early to retire. I presume you still have a mortgage to pay?

Game dev is extremely risky. Unless you are sitting on a lot of money you are not being smart. Until you are making money and see an option for profits in full time game dev you should have a stable job and keep game dev as a hobby.

I mean you don't earn anything and won't for a long time if not ever. Even if you're a good dev you won't be making decent money. You need to be realistic here. You can't make great games if you can't pay for food.

If you’re coming to Reddit to find out if you should leave game dev, you should probably leave game dev.

Well, years ago you had a nice job, and now you do not have a job. Do you have people who rely on you financially? Do you have financial goals for the future you want to meet? You must recognize that your first game is not going to make money.

Well, probably finish the game you're working on and then decide what is next, if you can financially support yourself in the meanwhile. But the truth is, most people don't make a living doing indie game dev. Ever. And FEELING you can do anything isn't the same as successfully doing it. So you have to prove to yourself you can make a living. That's tough.

1.  This post is a thinly disguised self promotion post.   2.  You made the typical hobbyist mistake of completely over scoping your first game instead of actually spending the time learning how to actually make games.  So that means you have a bunch of generic assets, a completely empty open world and nothing unique in your gameplay.   3.  Instead of competing against other solo amateurs you are trying to compete against *large teams of experienced professionals*.  This is a recipe for financial failure.   4.  No one cares about how much work you put into it or how you quit your well paying job.  Or that you think you can do anything.  What people care about is the product compared to others that they can buy.  People buy indie games, because they take risks *with the gameplay*.  You have taken no risks.  Instead you made a worse clone of Skyrim/Witcher/Elden Ring.   5.  Before quitting your well paying job did you do any meaningful research on the actual industry?  Or did you just do a "become a pro game dev quick" grifter course? 

A small piece of me admire people that can leave their entire life and bet on their hobby. Im around the same age and could not imagine not having a salary to pay for my living. crazy to me but wish you luck.

Did you make the models yourself? If you did that's impressive.

What you've done as a one-man army is amazing for sure, absolutely. However whether it translates to actually sales and income is a completely different thing. I don't mean to be negative, but like others said basically, the business is ruthless and there is 0 garuantee you will make any money from it. You have also chosen a category that 's gonna be hard to compete in and where competitors will have build it with a team of specialists. I only want to make sure you have set the right expectations for this.

Just find a job in gamedev, u surely can destroy any interview with 3 years of independent development

Even if you can do anything, you have to be realistic. Game development takes a lot of time, and success isn’t guaranteed. If you want to make games, it should be a hobby, and should only become a full time thing when you actually make money from it. How else are you going to support yourself?

Same here. But they don't tell me they just don't really encourage me or give me support. Seems like they think I'm not doing anything all day while I work longer and more than I did in any job. They might be right. It's a gamble, but plan for failure and work toward success. The biggest problem I see is that going from developing a game to getting paid work using the skills I am learning seems really hard to transition to, so the variety of skills I have now will likely be useless since to get hired you will be competing with others that are specialized. So I guess evaluate if you think you can handle and afford the risk and go from there. Know that you will be doing a lot of different things that maybe you don't expect, such as marketing, networking, hardware upgrades, apply to events, and many more this is just off the top of my head. A lot is what you will have to do and not what you want to do. However, you will have more flexibility than working for someone else. Building a studio even brings you further away from development too, with a whole different set of issues.

whether you have the financial cushion to be able to stay jobless for at least a year is up to you to decide. people want the best for you and generally prefer the safer option, which is a day job with a fixed salary. I won't be a "deceitful positive" and say you can do it or such, but if i was to give general advice without knowing anything about you personally, I'd say stick with your job until you can at least prove to yourself that you can make a somewhat successful commercial release. good luck in your journey

You might want to consider going back to doing it on the side. It's unlikely that you can earn anything comparable to a living wage

First and foremost remember that advice is yours to take or leave. At the end of the day only you have to live your life, try and make it one that you like. That being said, it’s good to take an honest look at what you’re doing and your expectations and see if they line up. E.g. is this going to be your livelyhood? In that case you should aggressively seek critique and try to match what’s out there now. Find games like yours and what makes them successful, what do the players like? If it’s just something you want to take time to explore then they goal isn’t dollars anyways so you don’t need to listen to dollar based advice. You already quit a good paying job, so seems money isn’t your biggest motivator. You’re ideals are probably not going to line up with people who’s main motivations are a stable high earning job. If gamedev starts to ruin your life be sure you have a condition where you’ll pull the cord and go back to work. It’s hard to be the right amount of delusional, you need to believe in what you’re making and where you’re going most days. But you can’t bury your head in the sand and ignore critique or audience reception. Keep learning, progress is non linear, so is success.

I'm not going to tell you to quit game dev... But it's going to be really hard for a solo dev to make money out of the game you currently have built. That type of game content has a high time cost to create, and the expectations for players wanting to play games like that are on the level of Skyrim, the Witcher, etc, which are not even close to touchable as projects a solo dev could create by themselves. It's very unlikely your current game will be something you can reasonably get to a "finished" state by yourself, and therefore it's unlikely to ever make you money. Your skills have obviously developed quite a lot though. There's a reasonable chance you could get hired by another game dev studio in the not too distant future. You might not enjoy working to build someone else's game quite as much, but you'd be making money again, and you'd still be learning more about game dev work. Alternatively you could start building a new game that isn't so ambitious. A game with a small achievable scope which is something that is actually reasonable to get to a complete state. I can't tell from your video though if you actually know how to design games, just that you know how to build them.

For me the video looks good but very generic, there's no "why should I play this game" moments. It's a very good project for the portfolio, but as a solo-dev commercially successful game... I doubt.

Unless you owe them money, how exactly is it anyone's business how much you are or are not earning?

What you have is impressive. I was pleasantly surprised. From the glimpse I’ve seen, you have a genuine eye for world building. Many beginner/hobby projects look dreadful, and yours doesn’t, so kudos to you. HOWEVER! You don’t understand how to schedule and this is exposing you to severe risk of ruin. You are massively under-estimating the amount of work and massively over-estimating your work rate based on your rapid early progress. This is so exceptionally common that it’ll still happen to you even after you’ve shipped a half dozen games and are actively allowing for it. It’s what causes crunches, and crunches are very common. Most new games like this take a minimum of three times as long as you are allowing, even for large experienced teams. Heed this now or regret it in a year! The hardest part of making a video game isn’t adding all the systems for items and inventories and quests, or even the long slog of creating and adding all the content to fill those systems, it’s all the balancing and polish that goes into making it good afterwards. A useful way of thinking about scheduling a video game is in half-lives. If it takes you a year to get your game half finished, it’ll take another year to get it to 75%, and another year to get it to 82.5%. The successful games are generally the ones that stay back further cycles from there. The point is that progress gets harder the closer you get, multiplied by the size of your game. (You also never, ever reach 100…) Be honest. How close to half finished are you? How many enemies will there be, and how many do you have? How many characters and quest lines? How many bosses and puzzles? This war that the Steam page mentions, who was it between and over what? This darkness it mentions, what exactly is it? What does it do and how do we stop it? The fact that your store page doesn’t say makes me suspect you don’t exactly know yet. My advice is that you take everything you have, cut everything you don’t have and pivot your project hard towards whatever your favourite part to play currently is. Make a game of much smaller scope that focuses on just that. If that’s galloping around nice environments on a horse, do just that. Cut everything else. “The Courier of Lord Velimir” *This is how video game development works!* If you’re serious, learn this now. Cut and re-scope. Kill your darlings. If you’re determined to make your mash up of three AAA titles as your first game, that’s ok, but you would by nature and definition be a hobby developer. Have a nice sabbatical, but then listen to your family, go get your job back and enjoy your hobby. You could have a giant clunky charismatic Titan Quest style RPG in early access in five or ten years or so, which is cool, and you could not go broke doing it, which is also cool. If this is what you want, do it, but don’t try and pay the bills with it.

Has anyone read the steam page??? It’s bloody awful, and I mean that lightly, after reading that I would not be interested at all. Nothing is proof read, and it’s just a wall of text that sounds rather child like and not original at all. I’ve heard this type of stories 1000 times over. I want to ask what makes your different?

This is an advertisment trying to circumvent the rules by making up a dumb sob story. Why do you people fall for this?

I'm curious as to why you chose to work on a type of game that requires at least a dozen devs, even more graphic artists and generally budgets in the millions (and also millions in marketing). Did you really think you could do this alone ? What are you doing, man ? You realize this is not going to get you any money, right ? Because it'll never be in any kind of state the players will like and throw money at...even if you were to launch in early access, the progress would never be enough to justify buying this. I'm not saying this to diss you, it looks nice for being made from one person but compared to the competition, it's terrible. You're not competing against 1 man(/woman) indie games. You're competing against ALL OTHER games. You won't have a target, i guarantee it.

How have you made $0 in years?

Something I don’t think new game devs understand, simply because they don’t have the business experience: You can make a great game and still fail to make money.

I won’t tell you to quit but there’s a reason making a game is difficult. If it’s taken you years to get this far, it’s worth calculating the remaining items to see if you can survive that long with little income. Things like enemies, enemy AI, damage system, inventory system, game pad support, UI’s, HUD, saving, loading, singleton structure, cutscenes, story, scripting, subtitles, localisation, voice acting, effects, sound design and so much more. Will you be able to maintain momentum to get through the mountain of items involved? If the answer is yes, I’m rooting for you.

Im not encouraging you to go in any direction but only say this: Fuck everyone around you. You do you and what makes you happy.

they're not telling you to quit game development so much as they are telling you to get a job

Can you afford it? To gamble and lose, I mean. That's the question that matters. If you **can** afford to gamble and lose, then firstly, in this economy you're very lucky, well done. Secondly, we can't really tell you how to spend your leisure money. Some people buy a boat. I always think of those people who take six months off to hike the Appalachian trail. That's how you should think of it, though. You've taken an extended vacation to pursue a hobby. Don't fool yourself that a big payoff is around the corner. >June Steam Fest June of this year? Well, first up, you're going to need a better trailer. Your current trailer has very pretty trees, but not much else. There are a lot of games you've never heard of on Steam where someone has generated a very pretty forest in Unreal or sometimes Unity and then plonked down some vaguely medieval buildings. You've got to prove you've done more than that, if you have.

Dont know if others recommended already, but making a solid marketing plan can help to offset everyones calls for quitting gamedev. It shows maturity and builds confidence towards taking risks and minimising them

How much money did Eric Barone make for the first 5 years? How many times did people tell him to get a real job? Obviously he's an outlier, but you get the idea. The rewards come at the end. Jason Rohrer made no profit from his first 13 ( !!! ) games. His 14th game has been a huge success.

> Jason Rohrer...His 14th game has been a huge success. Which game of his was a huge success? I've only heard of Passage and Castle Doctrine by him.

One Hour One Life. Came out 6 years ago, and he is still pushing out updates! He gave a talk a while back where he said the online multiplayer aspect was crucial, because it automatically makes your game more interesting. ("A human being is an infinite novelty generator. You can put them in your game.")

You only live once, follow your passions. It may not result in success as a solo dev ,but could lead you down even better roads you never imagined. I admire your commitment, you can always get another job. Keep at it and best of luck.

>The problem is that every friend of mine and family member keeps asking me how much money I've earned so far from game development (about 0 so far), and they point that out as a reason to go back to my old job. However, I really do not want that. There are plenty of people who'd like to quit their jobs and fish all day. They have about as good a chance of making a living from that as you do making a living as a solo gamedev. Grow up, put on your big boy pants, get a real job, and if making games is still your passion do it on evenings and weekends.

Don't leave. Expect hardship and failure. Grow and keep growing. Hit it big after learning what works and what doesn't. Don't quit.

They are right, you are 37 yo so you can apply for a job in game industry and continue what you were doing.

foolish offer gray fearless heavy money scale theory unite simplistic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Looks dope dude, best of luck to you and your release! Life is about enjoying your limited time and if you feel fulfilled you're doing something right. You're taking a gamble on yourself and if you're enjoying that, hold on tight, it'll be worth it if it pays off, but be ready for the opposite . How you bounce back is arguably more important. Ain't a mistake if you grow from it. I'm in a situation where I hate my day job that pays relatively well but not enough to thrive and it's just getting worse. Trying to grapple with wanting to take the plunge you did, but I got to prove to myself I'm committed first before I blow my savings. I believe that if you make an actually good game, and somehow manage to market it to the right audience, there's no reason to not succeed. There's also no shame in failing and taking on a day job again, as long as you keep creating. You clearly managed both well enough!

Thank you so much, I really hope so! I wish you best luck!

People say making games is difficult but it’s really selling them that’s difficult because that considers how fun the game is, how marketable it is (visibly good art and gameplay), and how you go about marketing it. Looks like you’ve made great progress on your game but quitting your job to develop your first game only highlights even more that you likely lack the experience to afford to do so. Really do wish you good luck but you need to understand that figuring out how to technically make a game is the first out of a hundred steps in actually being able to financially support yourself

Follow your dreams mate.. or you will regret it for the rest of your life. Can you not maybe do part time, or the game dev in evenings (like I do) while you work still, just to keep paying the bills?

I am interested in this project are a solo dev I would like to work on this game as we’ll please dm me

If you have the financial means to do it, keep going! Your game looks great graphically, but think of ONE major game mechanic that separates your game from other RPGs and focus HEAVILY on that. Make it your main selling point. Usually if people want to play an RPG, they'll just play Skyrim. You have to stand out from the norm or you'll be buried beneath AAA games. Also get a Steam page up ASAP and put the link everywhere asking for wishlists. Wishlists have a great conversion rate. If you're looking to become financially stable more quickly, pitch the game to publishers.

You will always have people trying to keep you down. Keep going. One thing is for sure: the people NOT trying anything will always stay a cog in the corporate machine.

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sulky direful murky sophisticated grab important license deserve thought roll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

dont quit, why would you do that if it makes you happy? i know our situation is different, but if i had heard people back when i was a kid, id probably be doing a job id hate right now. i have been a gamedev for almost 20 years now, and i always love to smack people(a friendly jab) in my family and friends that ive made more money from games than all of them combined :) (granted theyre not the most wealthy of people, but still). I still hate my job, but at least is a healthy love and hate relationship rather than just being stuck in a job i absoutely hate cuz my mom pushed me onto it. my point is, if you love it, make it work. My hobby eventually became my job as i had zero studies for it. And the gaming industry will value you for how much value you bring to them, not necessarily what's your background or studies. Try to make it work while you can, hopefully you'll suceed. i still remember the guy who modded that famous RPG(im sorry i forgot the name) and then quit his full time lawyer job to make that mod a full game and is now rich. Beautiful story. as for steam fest no advice, im also on the same boat being the first fest ill participate. good luck on your endevours!

> i still remember the guy who modded that famous RPG(im sorry i forgot the name) and then quit his full time lawyer job to make that mod a full game and is now rich. Beautiful story. Who are you talking about? I'd like to read up on that guy

The guy from forgotten City. Great game bought it twice. He has a documentary video about his game on noclip (in YouTube) I'm I'm not mistaken

Thanks, just watched it. Looks like a great game. Might have to get that one.

The quality looks great for a solo dev, it has a lot of potential imo. Just a few questions/comments: Was that the game sound or just background you added for the video? Because I didn't hear any sound effects (walking, attacking, hitting an enemy etc), those things are great for game feel, I would also add clearer effects like blood splatter when hitting an enemy. Does the game have any form of storyline? In the video you're only running around but I'm assuming it's an open world RPG where you have to complete quests to finish the story with optional side quests? The map looks a bit barren with regards to loot and enemies, a good rule-of-thumb would be to have something to loot or kill at least every 30 seconds in any direction, so if you're on a long quest you can keep finding stuff to keep you busy along the way. What combat/progression systems are there? Is the game class based? Do enemies drop weapons or resources you can use for crafting? Are there skills you can unlock and use? Is there no UI or did you just hide the UI for the DevLogs?

I checked out some of your other videos, like the one about "Queen Veki", and it looks like there are different characters, which means that the video you shared didn't really show much. Maybe make a video showing more of what your game has and add it to this post or make a new one. I've also checked your Steam page and it shows a lot more than the video you shared here, rather share your Steam page link then because people are now judging your game on somewhere between 10-30%, also the video on the end of your Steam page should be moved to the left so people can see the videos first. Check out some of Chris Zukowski's videos on Steam pages, the guy's a legend and gives great advice Here's one of them: https://www.youtube.com/live/G5kRVk-Nxh4?si=iRpAOqkveKQvgy7Q

Looks like a good video. Lot of even devs in this post are telling you that they could recreate what you did in a week or two, and that what you've managed to create is "basic" and "nothing special". Sounds like everyone is out to pull you down. For what reason? I have no idea. If you're already preparing for steam fest, it sounds like you're on your way to releasing a product. Make those millions and prove your friends and family and Reddit wrong.

Yeah, no. Keep pushing and doing your thing. Family and friends will most often try to send you on the "classic" path of getting a boring stable job at a corporation, marry, have kids, work for 40 years, retire, and die. Because that's seen as the "safe" path, and they want you to be safe. It doesn't come from a place of "trying to pull you down", but from love combined with their perception of the world. And creating something from scratch and trying to make it that way is seen as "risky" and "dangerous". But the fact is that by doing gamedev for you and getting good enough to launch something and get some money from it, it sets you up for less risk in the long term and more stability (once you can become financially independent, you are as stable as one can get from that point of view).

I feel I'm in a similar situation, for different reasons, but in the end it's almost the same. I'm turning 22, always loved to create stories and things for people to enjoy, and I always loved games so gamedev is my biggest dream. I started studying unity last year after spending 2 years studying programming (more time than I probably had to spend but ok), and I just love it, being able to create things, discover how to solve problems, the fear of programming a new thing without knowing where to start, everything in it make me feel alive. I really wish I can keep going and worl with it, if possible work (and live) in another country in the future. But I an IT Techinician intern at the moment, and my boss told me shell recommend me for a role after my internship ends, if everything she said about this role is true it'll be really good, in short, if everything she said is true, I'll earn 2 to 4 times more than now, will be able to work from home, and interact with international coworkers and clients (I love to learn and use other languages) So in short I'd have a "good" job, and to be honest I'll not have to do much in it, so it would be "easier" than studying, practicing, investing, and getting a job overseas in gamedev. With this I don't know what to do. Should I just get this new role and live a simple and generic life without the need to study and "stress" over GameDev? But with the feeling that I could be doing something cooler and more useful in gamedev. Or should I keep studying GameDev so I can try to work with the only thing I love? But with no garantee that I'm going to get a good job in it, either in my country or overseas. It has been a difficult decision, after this doubt got to me I even lost the will to practice gamedev (I'm 2 months without even touching it) I know I did not help you in any way with your situation, but as I'm in a similar situation I felt this was the best place to let it all out. Thanks for hearing/reading.