Game Design Musings

Game design is so rewarding, but also quite difficult. I have been looking to a lot of other indie game devs to get inspiration and understanding of what they did and how they did it. I keep a list of indie games that are cool and made by small teams of 1-10. They are all games I have played already, except for a few. 

I find that the majority of people that have released at least one successful indie game are already those who have created games before or have experimented with a bunch of projects. This seems about right in order to gain the experience needed to launch something great.

All the successful games on the list also tend to take 3-7 years to make! Quite an investment of time in something that may or may not turn out. Their passion for the project is usually what kept them going, despite a lot of setbacks in the years between. They had periods that were highly productive and faced big slumps in between where they may have wanted to abandon the project entirely. I'm glad that they shared these feelings openly because sometimes I get them too.

I also found it interesting that some devs realize that making a game with a much smaller scope can lead them to a bit of success as well. Something that can be built within 8 months could gather a bunch of interest as long as it has attractive features that catch people's eye. Usually this means that you need unique and pretty visuals, and decent sound effects and music. Unfortunately I would need a lot of help making pretty visuals, and my skills in the sound and music department are currently lacking. I am willing to learn as much as possible to make things happen though.

I learn a lot from this project, and I find the process quite fun. There is a giant mountain to climb to finish Psychoborg, and I am honestly not yet sure what the scope of this project really is. I want to keep it small so that I can get it done and feel like I completed something. I told myself I have a prototyping phase deadline of Dec 31st. Starting in January I will stop adding mechanics and begin producing content (such as levels and story, music, sound, visuals, then move on to a polishing phase. I want to go through to completion on a full project to see what every part of the process looks like when I am serious about releasing a game.

I dunno if anyone will have read this far, but if you did, gimme a like on this post to show some support that you believe in me when I say I want to finish this project. :D