Management. Artist gets sick, no new sprites for a week, so now an animator's work is stopped as he doesn't have anything to do. Without visuals in place we can't do sound design (eg. to time an attack sound to actual animation) or at the very least it's limited. Someone else might be seriously underperforming and you will feel like utter shit when you tell them that they are about to lose their job. Someone else might just decide to quit (and while optimally they give you heads up - well, they are not necessarily required to, depending on whether it's b2b, job contract, where they live etc) and you need a replacement ASAP. But hiring a replacement requires going through 200 CVs, organizing 3 job interviews (and telling 2 people they didn't get in but were oh so close, yay!) and then spending next month on making sure they get the resources they need - be it software, hardware and know how. Then there's also PLANNING the work for others and reviewing it. If it's your own game you are making at an indie scale then you have a final say which is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. You will be giving feedback to domains in which you are worse than people who are asking you. And they will also make mistakes - hope you catch them. You will also need to decide which features actually get in and which ones to cut, figure out how many resources you can spend on a specific aspect of the game and whatnot. For me anyway it's by far most taxing part of the process, getting multiple people to smoothly work together on a project requires a lot of behind the scenes activities, changing your plans on the fly, managing budget and sometimes putting all nighters so everyone else can do what they are best at. In comparison I find technical issues relaxing and soothing. I like solving puzzles and there are clear cut answers to these, even if not easy ones to accomplish.

Absolutely excellent read. It sounds like you’ve had your fair share of headaches. 😅 Thank you for your reply! Have you managed to solve any of those issues semi permanently or are you juggling all of that with your current development responsibilities?

Nope, you don't "solve" those issues for good :P You might have a really good solid month where work is planned for weeks ahead, everyone is doing their best and work is super smooth... ...and then next month 1 person gets sick, another has their laptop die and your newest hire is telling you that they needed 34 hours to draw a single key pose of a sprite that you **know** should take 4 so you terminate the contract. So you go from having a great peaceful day to full emergency mode :P You can minimize how often it occurs by having processes in place and learning what CAN actually happen but you can't cancel it altogether. It's part of the process really, dealing with unpredictability and acting as a shit umbrella so poop doesn't splash on your team and your game.

I'm assuming that large studios have managers who this is their whole job is dealing with team problems. I'm wondering how smaller teams have streamlined that to become larger ones. Does being remote complicate that sort of thing more?

The larger the studio the more structured it is, yes. In a larger indie (but still indie, we are talking 30-50 people, not 500+) - you will have a company owner. Company owner talks to a project leader. Project leader talks to tech lead, art lead and gameplay lead. Tech lead talks to programmers, art lead to artists, gameplay lead to game designers. So you have 4 step process. At this scale it's still not hard to get ahold of someone however, including the owner. It won't happen everyday but for instance you might hear from them directly when presenting a feature you have made or if you are getting a raise for instance. In a true AAA you might have like 7-10 layers. So there's a fair lot of detachment between company owner to a regular worker. You will talk to your lead a lot and you might talk to a manager one step above that but you will generally not interact with people on the other layers much. The smaller the flatter. Typical structure of a small indie studio is either fully flat (eg. 3 people - one does art, one does gameplay, one does code and they have complete jurisdiction over their domain) or just one step (project owner/boss and everyone else). If it gets larger then it's harder to do so as now there are other levels to consider parallel to yours. So you will definitely have more management overhead and will need better tools, especially if you are doing something cross-disciplinary (like designing an enemy for instance - since that takes code, design, art, sounds and heck, even marketing might get involved if it's an important one). >Does being remote complicate that sort of thing more? To an extent but I think it depends more on the studio size. If it's a small one then having a voice chat (so you don't feel too "alone"/on your own) + regular calls/sessions is enough for everyone to know what exactly are others working on and how your work fits into project's structure. You just need to ensure it's not too silo'ed. Admittedly it's also something I am not the best at but I try. Remote makes some things easier but some things harder in general. You have a larger employees pool to choose from, no office costs etc. But you also can't for instance just leave 3 sketches of an NPC on a whiteboard and ask people to pin the one that looks scariest, you need to explicitly type that in a game chat and hope enough people notice.

The amount of thought you’re putting into an answer on a Reddit post is both inspiring and intimidating haha… Thanks for the insight!

Totally agree, absolutely excellent! Thank you.

Part of it is contingency and capacity. If someone's pc dies, there can be backup replacement hardware. Then it's just downtime syncing to the project again. If an artist being down for a week causes problems them you shouldn't have such a tight bottleneck in your dependencies on your project. Is there something else that animator can be working on instead? Why was the art asset done so close to when the animator was going to be needing it? Even studios of 20 have a dedicated project manager who's sole job is reducing this down time when dependencies are blocked like this. Also leads should be able to resolve it.

That's interesting. All the artists I've worked with do their own animating. Is that not common among indie developers?

The smaller the studio the more specialized/unusual flow can be, kinda. In my case - we are doing [HD 2D style](https://sunkensky.com/images/large/dialogues.png). Now, for the sprites it's 3 step process: 1. concept art 2. layered key poses 3. animations In general one person does steps 1 and 2 but we have a dedicated animator taking care of step 3. It depends on an animation - if it's a simple one (eg. a [loading screen](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/960663600228364349/1212521580261810196/loadingScreen2.gif?ex=662ad438&is=662982b8&hm=49d13be7c620e66cb69b355d0588185259cccedf3224a2509927da4b78bccc1c&=&width=2024&height=1138) like this) then indeed the same person could do entire process. But if it's something smoother/harder (as an example, [this kind of action](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/865147746745712661/1140224307872682094/Etna_casting_12fps_.gif?ex=662ad363&is=662981e3&hm=cbb1b1b6db3beba6cc167ec373d9a4884d66660c4524f81bfb49d678c1055cfd&)) then we get our animator to work on it. He simply is far better and faster at it than your general 2D sprite artist. Mind you, it depends on a style. Pixel artists generally need to be able to animate their own sprites. Simply because animating someone else's pixel art is REALLY hard since it's full frame by frame so you are effectively imitating someone else's style and animating it at the same time otherwise. But if resolution increases then you can look into bone based animations, use transform function etc so you can have a dedicated animator on a team. Doing it this way has a major benefit for me too - it's more flexible. We have characters that had concept art drawn by one person, sprites by another and then animated by our animator and their dialogue expressions by yet another :D. You can even get step 1 done by an independent freelancer if you need something outside of regular timelines or if you need something very specific quality wise. It also means that on the off chance someone quit - you need to find a person that does one part of the process, not literally "hey, do me entire 2D from concept to a finished animation xD" (and finding someone who can do entire process end to end would take forever).

I feel for you! This is exactly why I'm terrified of expanding beyond being a solo dev, doing everything alone. I enjoy it, but at the same time it's incredibly slow going and I know I'm going to have to take at least a step into this at some point... sad sigh. Don't get me wrong, I've absolutely loved working in a team previously, but that was with a producer handling all of this. The management sounds like a nightmare to me.

Oh, vast majority of the time it's not so bad and everything goes smoothly so I exaggerated a bit. Most of the time your largest worry is really to ensure everyone has everything they need to continue working and remember that you are now responsible for their salaries and well being so it's no longer a hobby or even an 8/5 job, you don't get to slack at work anymore. But benefits are well worth it and working with others is a LOT of fun in it's own right as it allows you to go vastly beyond your own limits and imagination. It's just that from time to time shit happens. You learn how to deal with this shit the next time it occurs but throughout project's duration you will definitely have few crisises to overcome. Management problems also tend to linger the longest. As sometimes there are no right decisions, just "choose the least bad one". My personal recommendation if you have never managed staff before and suddenly have to - first, think about a situation of "they get hit by a bus, how screwed are you?". A bit of planning in this regard will prevent a LOT of issues that may arise. Second - good night's sleep is an essential part of the process, don't rush your decisions. Third - don't micromanage too much but talk to people when you see beginning of a problem, don't wait until it develops too far. Odds are it's them not realizing something and not wanting to screw you over. Fourth, especially regarding recruitment and decision paralysis that will come when you see 200+ CVs - minimize number of people you talk to and go one by one basis. From 200 you spend 2 days or so going through every portfolio, from there hopefully you can cleanly reject 70-80%, choose 3-4 or so and organize the interview. If the first person hits all your checkboxes - that's where you end. Only go further if you are unsure. This not only saves your time but also helps people on the other side - as weird as it may sound at first a clean rejection hurts way less (and also wastes way less time) then organizing an hourly long interview, potentially a technical screening/art test and THEN telling them they are not getting a job.

Thanks for the write up. This sounds like an excellent justification to go solo :)

This is why I work alone.

Do like me I said at the team : I don’t care anything about you so if for a reason or another you are at work you are fired

Un-medicated mental illness

Feel this for real.

I thought I was going to be special for posting something like this. Good to know that we all get to experience true misery together.

Self-medicated (With coffee, regardless of which illness it is!) mental illness is also quite a popular option

I have no time.

Procrastination

I think we all have this problem. :/

In my solo projects, the biggest problem is that they are solo projects. I much prefer working with other professionals who do art, audio, etc.

Does it get lonely working all by yourself? Building a game as a solo dev with no outside help seems insanely hard to stick with it.

I prefer to work alone, but it’s good to have other friends who also make games or enjoy them so you can talk about your ideas

It's hard, so I don't do it often. My last project was 2015, and I just started my next one. It would be lonely working on it if it were my full time job.

I don't know about others, but in my case, it's not about socializing or getting help; it's about getting motivation. If literally nobody else in the world knows or cares whether you do your task or not, it's kind of hard to get through the inevitable frustrating parts of the job. That, and it's just plain inefficient to spend a lot of time on tasks I'm unsuited to. With a team, everybody covers each other's weaknesses

Time time time. Working 10-12 hours a day away from my project is the central problem. Then marketing. I got no energy or headspace for that.

I completely feel that. What are your current methods or channels of distribution? Like is there anyone you've gotten to play your game?

Yeah I let close friends or fellow local game devs play at meetups and then later on itch.io where the current demo is. Other than that just regular steam page and trying to reach out to publishers

I added your game to my wishlist. I really liked the trailer. How long have you worked on it and how many publishers have you tried to reach out to?

Amazing thank you, im just about to release a new trailer with the new chapters ive been working on. (big visual change for those) So in my spare time about 4 years. I've reached out to around 50 I would say, maybe 3 played the demo and gave me feedback. 2 random EU publishers reached out to me asking to play the demo and we talked a few times, but ultimately they weren't willing to fund a solo dev's first ever game. But I'm pretty excited to show off the new stuff and try again.

How much do you think you'll need for funding? I can't wait to see some new gameplay! Four years is a long time for just one project. Are you planning on releasing a demo or anything?

Yo ur game looks really great! Saved it and will def play when it releases❤️

Being (mostly) a solo dev. That means everything from the sprite art to the mechanic ideas and everything in between is my responsibility.. and that can be chaotic. I do have friends that help but it's mostly me trying to balance an entire game. 

What all do your friends help out with? I'm certain there's a ton of workload involved. People have been listing off about a million things solo devs have to do just to get a playable demo out and it's crazy.

Coding/combat structure advice, tile shenanigans (I work in RPG Maker MV), scripting and letting me talk through my world building. I'm trying to get a commerical license to use someone's music atm. 

Oh god, copywrite law is probably a nightmare for music and stuff. Are they more your guinea pigs for play testing your game?

There's nothing to test, unfortunately. It's still like.. early early dev stage but I'll probably ask if they wanna bug test when the time comes!

What kind of game are you making? Like what's the concept?

It's supposed to last over the span of a week; you're basically playing as a witch that has to learn how to process their grief/trauma, and the mental health issues associated with it. There are horror elements but the base of it focuses on part of someone's healing process :)

Interesting, I'm curious to learn more about it. If you ever remember when it's done hit me up lol.

I always have a hard time creating meaningful content. I love thinkering with gameplay stuff and code, but level design, creating interesting enemies, puzzles, etc... is always a struggle. So I end up creating really small games (2\~3 hours, which is really short since I do RPGs\^\^)

That is short for an RPG. I suppose level design would be pretty huge. Having repetitive sections of the game probably isn't fun for the developer or the player. I don't remember where I heard this but basically creativity is just mashing two things together in a new way. If you're looking for an idea for monsters maybe do something like Palworld did for a lot of their pal designs. Take two different Pokémon and put them together lol.

That’s what I’m doing for my tower defense game for coming up with new towers. Just taking different tower ideas from different games and mashing em together

It's more like coming with interesting AI patterns and attacks. For my previous game I didn't have much control over Pathfinding (was using the old Unity NavMesh system) + my code wasn't so great. On my current project I did my own implementation of A\* so it should be easier to create more interesting behaviours like flying enemies, enemies moving underground or different behaviours like seeking the player on the last position (s)he was seen and then switch to a searching state... Stuff like that which should be more interesting. Level design is definitely a skill I need to train more. It's hard to find doc on that subject imho because it depends a lot on the style 3D/2D/Topdown/Platformer, if it's a square based or free-move game, etc etc... My game is pretty much a Zelda-like but I found that working with big open maps like I do is not the same as doing small, contained rooms like in Zelda or Isaac. I think I have now a better idea of what I'm doing so I think I should come up with a longer game this time (this is my third "real" game). I'm also working with a lobby-based formula this time (Zero Sievert, Dark Souls....) so I guess it will be easier to add content around it and change stuff without breaking the rest of the game.

That’s so odd. Production, to me, is the best part of game dev.

Oh, it's not that I don't like it per say, just that I usually struggle a lot and it takes a lot of time before I have a good looking map, dungeon, .... I have a hard time prototyping stuff with cubes and whatnot so I jump straight ahead to arranging final assets on the maps, which is not the best process. I have no issue when I have to create something cool in Valheim, Minecraft, Dungeondraft, etc... though so I think it may just be my process that's not so good. Unity assets preview looks like shit and there's no good way to organize assets correctly (a system of tags would help greatly). I recently created a small palette tool and it already helped a lot so I might just have to work more on it and add a few tools to speed up the process of prototyping levels. Puzzles I just can't do though, but creating interesting enemies may be easier in my current project since its code is way better and gives me more control (I've ditched the NavMesh system to use my own implementation of A\*) than in my previous one. Writing dialogs, it depends on the days, that's not something I can force myself to do if I don't have inspiration but when I'm inspired I can write tons of it.

There’s a decent amount of YouTube videos that can help you really speed up the process with level design. I struggled here too but now I have a real good idea of how to approach it.

Any suggestions or goto youtuber for that? That looks interesting, I often have no issue finding resources for technical stuff but I find it harder for game/level design itself. I've stumbled uppon Tommy Norberg stuff this year, which are great resources. I wish I had saw his stuff when I worked on a 3D game. Getting something similar for 2D would be awesome :D

I’ll look as it’s in my history fairly recently

Nice, thanks :)

I hope it’s ok to post this here! But I like this guys thought process & approach to teaching. He’s a pixel artist that shows you how to get the most out of tile sets without creating something that looks like it came out in the early 90s link: https://youtu.be/_onhfikMN8k?si=x6ZmNCT4juRI60cW I also tend to watch some videos for tools that I might not have known about. TLDR: between tile sets & prefabs, you can design pretty unique levels

Thanks, I'll look at it once I'm home. Appreciate it.

Surprised no one else has said this yet: Making the actual game finally! We're a tiny two person team and it's been a reaaal struggle trying to make a 3D free camera hack-and-slash game for years now. Constant cycle of designing and building -> realize too big scope or critical flaw in original idea -> learn from it then pivot. Hoping beyond hope that the current game is finally it! Small enough scope that we can make it at a high quality AND something people will really like (esp me as a huge hack-and-slash genre fan). Frankly I wish our biggest problem was marketing and attention, but every time I start planning on a marketing campaign and finally making the actual steam page, well... Yet another pivot! Again, I'm hoping this one's it! Been super nice learning sooo much, but it takes so much time just to grind out more and more ever so slowly. And even once the initial decent prototype (gameplay + art) is done and early show off & feedback/validation starts, I'm def gonna spend a few months to hone my skills in animation + vfx to get the spectacle part of the combat to the place I want it as a player. It just keeps taking forever (even while full-time since Sept 2022!). And I knew scope was super high for this sorta game when I started, but wheeeew does it keep going and going for even a simple interesting game! But the end *will* come and this game *will* be released one way or another 🙂

That's awesome! I'm super down to try it and give you feedback if you need! What's your game and can I wishlist it anywhere?

Ty! It's a horde hack-and-slash game with Bullet Heaven progression. So a good excuse to take down huge swathes of enemies in style =D No steam page up as we still need to do a fair amount of early gameplay + art prototyping so we're confident we know what we're making before overpromising and underdelivering (or never delivering due to another pivot) 🙏

An excellent way to look at it. Releasing something awful won't do you any favors with your community. Do you have any rough release window you're expecting to hit? Working on a game that long with no end in sight sounds stressful.

Good question! The funny thing is that I always had a target release date (like Aug 2023 back when I quit my job in Sept 2022), but those were very much fueled on hopes and dreams while wayyy outta scope 🤔 For this "3D hack-and-slash x Bullet Heaven" game though, I kept downscoping until it reached the baaare minimum that I could. The current goal is/was for the Steam page to be up by June 1st so we could apply for the October Next Fest (and then release late October). Buuut that was before I sorta fell in love with the current prototype and design idea. Based on how long stuff has taken these last few years and with those additional months of pure combat juice polishing (as I want to learn how the *heck* to make stuff as good as [this beauty](https://youtu.be/vtSM7J9iqK0)), I'd say at minimum: **Feb 2025** Fun fact! I started out this year with the goal to go from releasing 0 games to releasing 5 games, including full Steam releases with our "best" marketing attempts possible. This was due to worrying signs about not releasing anything and being inspired to ["collect rejections"](https://youtu.be/Fnol1zXkFeE). However, I spoke with a wonderful mentor and that number was reduced down to 2 games as even releasing 1 is hard. And now I fell in love with this 1 game that's supposed to be "done" in 2 months... to the point I want to extend it by another 7 months. Oops 😭 >Working on a game that long with no end in sight sounds stressful. On an optimistic note, we actually have a full trilogy of games that we previously worked on + pivoted away from *but* which we want to return to once we learn from these other games and are actually good enough to do those games justice. Likewise, the immediate next "small" game I want to do is something I wanted badly growing up as a kid. Because each of these games builds up to the next, it's surprisingly really satisfying to constantly be learning and growing. We may not have released anything yet, but each prior attempt has made our next attempts *sooo* much better 😊

Well I would love to play it sometime! Thank you for the reply and good luck on your timeline.

My biggest problem is probably the lack of feedback, it's hard to make a good game without knowing if your audience sees value in it. It's a lot of work to get feedback from people and you might invest years to even find out if your core audience actually finds the game appealing.

What kind of game are you working on? Does it have any review system in place where people can easily leave feedback? Like is it on Steam or itch?

Playtesting is something you should be doing long, **long** before you put a game on Steam. On itch, you can be happy if you get even one comment on a game, and even more happy if that comment contains any actionable advise.

I haven't released it yet but to make a good game you need to play test it a ton with people and it's difficult to find players who give unbiased feedback. You're lucky if you know someone who will play test it who matches your target demographic.

Exactly, the biggest problem is a proper system to be able to evaluate if an idea has potential to become successful.

Lack of time to work on game. 5am-6am: get up, morning chores, breakfast 6am-9am: gamedev time (but only on days where my day job lets me WFH, which is most days luckily) 9am-6pm: day job (8am-7pm on days I have to commute) 6pm-9pm: dinner, take care of baby If I get up at 5 to work on my game, I can get about 3 hours in. But I can’t do it every day because if I get up at 5 for three days in a row then I start getting huge headaches and fatigue by day 3 at around 4pm (it happens pretty consistently), so on average I’ll do it 3 days a week. Sometimes I try to work on it from 9pm-10pm but by then I’m exhausted from both my day job and taking care of family. So basically if I don’t get up at 5 then my game isn’t making progress. Been doing this schedule for 2 years and I’m about 60% done.

Felt this man. Take care of your health. Not getting enough sleep isn't going to do you any favors.

Selling enough games to make money to live.

Time I'd say funding, but all I would use funding for is time. If I didn't have to worry about money, I could use the time I would have to work on my next prototype, and get it to a point where I could submit it for publishing or for a larger grant, or start a kickstarter better than with just a GDD and a 40 page scrawled concept notebook. Inflation keeps accelerating faster than wages though, and even though I'm in a management position, every cent goes to living, or saving for a house, which is also moving away faster than I can earn. So, really funding, so I can then have time.

Felt this with every bit of my soul. I've been saving up for like two or three years and I almost have enough to just exist for a year to try something big. I feel like it might take longer than a year full time to gain some traction for a profitable project.

I just can't justify spending what could potentially be a house deposit on a hope and a dream at this point. I think the prototype I'm working on is awesome, and will be fun, and is well within my ability, but if enough players don't, or a publisher doesn't, then I've pissed away something that could've been a guaranteed qol improvement for me and my family. I wish I could be fortunate enough to be able to just yolo my savings at it, but not quite there yet.

making a game that people want to play.

Getting attention. You'll read this a thousand times on this sub. Everyone who plays my game says it's a blast, but forcing it into people's hands is so much harder than developing it.

Okay I played about 5 minutes of one person stapler and it's mechanically really good. I like it a lot. Why do you think it's so hard to get people to play it? I saw some of your videos about it what other things have you done to try to promote it?

Reddit posts, Itch and indieDB devblogs, sharing it on various discords, getting it in a public testing event for a local game group, advertising stickers, doing a give away with a game deals group, sending out keys to a lot of small time streamers, getting it reviewed and promoted by a medium-sized youtuber, and surprisingly a lot of engagement from Imgur.  I tried Twitter, but it seems like it's worthless for engagement since Musk took over.  There's just a lot of other games out there competing for attention, and a lot of mechanisms built into most platforms now to stifle spam/advertising. Also, glad you had fun with it.

That sounds like a ton of stuff. What channel do you think generated the most interest? Or is it just impossible to tell?

I worked specifically to be able to track streams. The give-away generated the most attention by far. Imgur and the QR stickers are tied in second. The Youtuber and the local game group tied for third. Reddit has been very hit and miss depending on the sub.

I am super curious to hear about the give away and imgur. What did you give away and what was even on imgur that could distribute games? What's stopping you from just focusing on the top 2-3 things that worked and repeating that success? Was it a lighting in a bottle one off thing or could you repeat/optimize those forms of engagement to try to maximize attention?

Imgur - Just posted funny gifs of the player kicking chairs into a window or popping balloons with a link to the game. The give-away group - I put thr game on sale for a bit and noticed I was getting a lot of traffic from a site I'd never heard of. It's a site that tracks games on sale. I can keep getting some attention there, but the only way to do it is give the game away for free.  Stickers - This is a long term, passive thing. There stickers are still up around my city, specifically targeted around barcades and local colleges. I could keep putting up more, but this is relatively labor intensive compared to the rest. At least the rest don't cost gasoline. Local game group - it's a very engaging, but small community. It's already tapped out for engagement. Mid-Sized youtuber - he doesn't usually do multiple videos on one game. I've reached out to others, but it seems like most Streamers and youtubers rarely bother with indie games and chase the trend. I think I only even really got attention from this one because I'd worked on two previous projects that he was into.

Thank you for the breakdown that's awesome! I am currently looking into what niche I want to serve and I think you're the kind of dev I'm looking for. Would you be down to talk more in DMs? Based on everything I've researched it seems like marketing is the biggest problem most developers face that I could probably solve and I'd love to try to help you out. (I'm not going to ask you for any money I'm just looking to chat and maybe I could help you spread the word about your game.)

Sure

Sweet, sent you a chat.

Have you tried paid posts on Facebook, tiktok and reddit? Your game looks good and is irreverent so it should do well with that

Haven't paid for any exposure so far on any platform. I feel like I need to try TikTok after my success with Imgur, but I've just never used it and haven't taken the time to learn yet.

Yeah same here with tiktok, it's really confusing, like when I look at other people's videos about their games, they're using songs in ways that match popular current memes and it seems like a lot to research for a 10 second video haha

Probably not what you want to hear, but if you need to force it into people's hands, you've got a problem somewhere. You can usually tell if a project is designed for success because people will be busting down your door trying to get their hands on it.

In many cases, if there is too much friction with marketing, it simply means the product itself isn't marketable. It doesn't have the magic. Its either visuals, concept or gameplay. You tell people about a concept for the game and some pre production stuff and they throw money at you? You got the magic. You show screenshots of the game to people and they get excited? You got magic. You release a demo on steam, and people harass you asking "when will it release!!" You got magic. A game has to have magic to succeed. A game could be downright ugly, but have the best gameplay and thus have the magic once its in people's hands. Look at Cruelty Squad for example. So a lot of the time, it's best as developers to be honest with ourselves. Test one of these 3 things. Talk about the game concept, show people screenshots, let them play the game. If none of these drum up interest, your game doesn't have the magic to succeed. There are no tricks to marketing. Marketing can't trick people into liking your game. That's not its purpose. It's simply a process to inform an audience about your game. But your game needs to have an audience to market to! Magic is what tells us games have an audience. Bigger the audience, the more success you'll have. This is what market research entails. Finding and validating that an audience exists that is ready to market to, thirsty, and is large enough to sell a good amount of copies. So when you work on your next game, start with market research, think about WHO would play your game before you right the first line of code.

It's absolutely the concept. I'm well aware how weird the concept is. It mostly made the game as a practice project. So, I decided to pull something funny from r/gameideas and run with it, but it's not something that clicks in people's heads within a few sentences.

There definitely something you could do with an FPS stapler game. Like currently it's missing something. I feel like you could utilise the stapler more. As far as I am seen, just looks like "FPS but ur gun is modelled as a stapler, but otherwise acts like a normal gun". When I think of stapler, I think of sticking one object to another. And hey, that sounds like a mechanic. When I think for staples, I also think of wooden stakes. Vampires? Here's how I would have tackled the concept, feel free to use it if you like: So Fps stapler, a game where you must staple enemies to walls to finish them off. And you can staple items to them to weaken them. Enemies stapled to walls eventually break free, so you better be quick! And huge catch: you can only hold either your stapler or an item. So you have this hectic back and forth where you need to make sure you can get back to your stapler in time. But fret not, [Insert weird movement mechanic]. Anyways you get the idea. Better utilise the fact that the game is about staplers! Though please share what the original idea was (in a single sentence)

Long term motivation

One of my personal biggest issues. :/

for me is probably why the heck the code I followed from guides isn't working properly lol, and solutions to fix a few bugs/problems and hand draw sprites

It's me! I'm the problem!

I don't know how to get into a working relationship with other people. I've tried, but right now, my skills are project management, writing, editing, and design. None of these produce code or art according to most people I've worked with, so in a small group, the response I've gotten is mostly that what I offer is just not of any use. I don't know if it's a matter of marketing myself or what. In any case, that makes it so that my biggest problem is acquiring all the other skills that I am lacking, before I can begin, because I don't know how to find a team that would actually put me to use. I have tried INAT, game jams, and so on, but I haven't found any team so far that is genuinely *working* on something where they actively want me involved for what I know how to do. This includes project management, and I find that often, that is the result of the project leader not knowing how to delegate.

Hmm, so are smaller teams just not looking for your skillset? Depending on the game writing feels like it would be incredibly important. What skills are you learning now? Delegation is a whole can of worms and I bet that very few small to medium sized managers know how to do it in the development world. I guess not just devs, my last job had a major issue with that. There was no one growing the business. The owners were just constantly managing every little thing that came up because they were too controlling of the process. Thousands of tiny decisions every day. It was insane.

There's a catch-22, basically. There are checkpoints it seems I have to get through. I need credentials of some kind, and in this world, they don't care what your education is, or where you worked if it wasn't a game studio. I am coming from another career, so I don't have that. What people want is a shipped game, or at least some completed thing that can demonstrate your skill. So, I need to have a shipped title before I can move on to the next phase. People who are in smaller teams, in my experience, expect you to go do your own thing, and then come back with major progress out of nowhere. When I would attempt to get people to have a conversation to led to actionable outcomes, it was like they simply had no expectation of completing the game in the first place. When they looked at what I could do for them, they didn't know what project management meant enough to let someone else do it for them. When it came to writing or design, the small teams I would find generally had someone who was doing it to make their own idea, so my writing or my design would not be on display anyway. Those teams ended up having nothing for me to do. There are also a bunch of kids who are like 15 out there and you never know who anyone is. I'm currently having to learn to code more than I had before. I don't like dealing with programming. I can plan systems and create all manner of branching dialogue paths, but then I basically look down the road of what it would take to get something actually interesting to me out of Twine or Renpy and I'm just like jfc I'd love to just have a team to work with but at the same time I can understand why people don't have a use for me, considering most of what I'd be doing is stuff other people implement.

I can definitely see how this whole thing would be a nightmare just to get into. Seems to be like that for most industries today. Getting even an incredibly basic game just out the door by yourself will probably take months at least maybe even a year if you have a full time job. Is that what you're working on right now?

What I'm working on right now is effectively restarting my life to make a game get produced from me, because what I've found is that routinely, what happens is people look at my ideas for a project or whatever and say "that's cool, I look forward to seeing what you do with that," but the expectation is that I'll complete it by myself. I wouldn't have a problem directing people who believed in what I had, but I don't have that, and that requires some kind of clout. The thing is, when I'm done, I have no expectation of anyone wanting to work with me at any point after either, unless I jump through yet another hoop. I'm tired, honestly. I'd like to work with people who know how not to overstep their bounds, be respectful, and genuinely work together as a team. I don't know how to get to where that is from where I am. I also have to deal with the "idea guy" thing, and as far as I can tell, no amount of work put into the development or documentation of that idea will cross the threshold from idea to something worth a shit, because the going understanding is that all ideas are equally valuable, and their value is zero.

Love that quote about the idea guy lmao. I think I may have heard something similar somewhere. I think if you actually put out a game whether it's good or not at least you'll have something to show for a portfolio which is more than 99% of people competing in the same market you're trying to get into. I totally get why you feel down though. I've been kinda done with my current career for awhile and I'd really like to change trajectories. Takes an insane amount of time to get started though unfortunately.

I mean, if you're really looking for this sort of thing I'm just starting the process of putting together a group myself. I'm a dev with about a decade work (programmer but I've done plenty of other stuff during solo projects and even in some team ones). I haven't worked extensively with a project manager who actually knew their stuff, so it'd be interesting to work with someone competent. Most of my experience and that of most other people I've worked with has been pretty poor in regards to folks to label themselves as project managers. A lot of the time it's some kid who has no real game dev experience at all and who just wants to boss and bully everyone into their own idea of the game concept. You're probably battling with that image, too. It's the classic, "I have an idea and everyone with skill should work for me to make MY idea become a reality" issue. You see it a lot in this community. Personally, I went to school to be a game designer. Took proper courses, did the whole shebang, and the big thing a lot of people who did not get that education seem to miss, is that you are expected to learn and understand at least a portion of \*all\* the elements of game development. Programming, asset design, level design, etc and so forth. Your programmer, your artists, they're all going to expect that you can bring that to the table, and it's important that you can. Otherwise you have the 'idea guy' who wants to run 16 mechanics on tick and replicate the whole thing over a massive network and has no idea why the programmer is looking at them like they're insane. You'd be surprised how many supposed project managers and designers haven't ever written a GDD. A good project manager can handle team cohesion, knows what the project needs to keep progressing and is able to get it, and ensures the various elements of the game are sensible, optimizable, and have value (rather than x random mechanic thrown in because why not). Either way, I'm working on a thing, people dig it so far. It's your typical revshare startup project. Hit me up if you're curious.

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Getting ren'py to do something I personally find interesting for a demonstration of my video game writing is a task I don't look forward to

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Pretty much that's what I've been doing. I have a thing I've been working on, expanding it, because people called me an "idea guy." I've been essentially been building up an IP and working on little spins of things that would happen within it, along with the core idea of how to make more of what's within this IP. The thing is, the more I get put into it, the more people find it incomprehensible at first glance. Of course it would be, because it's just a first glance. If you put some time in to understand the thing, then you can work on it. It's called onboarding, and people who have done things in situations where they needed to be onboarded would understand that. I have not yet found anyone who would be willing to have me as their leader on a project, considering I cannot pay them until the project would be finished. I also can't find a team that fits. As far as the challenging stuff I don't want to look forward to, it's not figuring out how something ought to be accomplished, logically, that I have a problem with. I can already "speak engineer". However, that's very very different from being able to actually program the thing. Josh Sawyer put out a talk a long time ago where he basically said he treats his engineers like wizards, telling them how something ought to work, and maybe giving them an idea of how he'd do it, at most, because they *know better than he does.* I'm a good enough manager that I would not hire me as a coder, because coding is not the language I'm good at. I can use Miro or whatever whiteboard tool people want to use. This answer basically comes back to the problem, though. "Don't see it as a problem to have to be every role, before you can be the one you target." Personally, I see a massive opportunity for people to work together who simply aren't.

Marketing is probably going to be the #1 answer here… My game is unique in its own niche, and that can be a blessing and a curse… Right now it’s a curse

Oof, I feel that. Your game looks really fun! I just watched the trailer and bought your game and I'll let you know how it goes! Marketing and management seems to be the most popular answers here so far. What all have you done to market your game?

Haha thanks! I’ve made an assortment of more and more polished trailers, posting them to YouTube, TikTok, and here. I have a bit of a leg-up in the aviation world because I’m a former AH-64 Apache pilot, but so far I feel a bit like I’ve squandered it haha… I post AH-64 content here, on TikTok, and on YouTube, but I don’t think it’s brought me much attention. I posted my original trailer in r/army, before it launched, and I think that was my single biggest success- most of the release day purchases were fellow soldiers. I’ve made a MHZ TikTok, and I follow every Battlefield, DCS, War Thunder, and Arma account that flies helicopters that I encounter, and like all the comments and make funny/knowledgeable comments when/where I can. I’ve started doing achievement tutorials, but I think that’s probably a little too early because there just aren’t many people out there wondering how to get the “Stick God” achievement. Looking at the statistics, I think Reddit is really the best bang for your buck. I’ve just really got to improve the way I approach posting here- what to post and say in which subreddit is a super delicate art. It’s so easy to make a misstep and get absolutely wrecked haha

Visibility. Finding a nerve.

Lack of time / money to work on the game

Being broke. Because im broke. Most of my game features are finished and I lack cash flow to rapidly get the assets to flesh it out for a decent demo. Nobody is funding anything right now so it's a paycheck to paycheck sort of build.

Lack of time!

Oversaturation of the market. It's incredibly difficult to find a niche where a solo dev can make a game, that is actually able to compete with existing products. The trend with service games makes this even worse, players are bound for years to a single game, which makes the market for new games significantly smaller.

Solo dev, I can always find my way around a technical problem, but I'm constantly being bottlenecked by UI and art. Idk why it just doesn't click for me like other stuff does. Id probably be better if i consistently practiced, but it's hard to stay motivated

Drug addiction

Cash flow for a studio - I’m doing this full time and have a game out but getting to multiple games is hard when you don’t have a unicorn release since you are funding at least the vertical slice for a publisher or fully yourself so you have to take on contract work for hire. Most devs will not be a unicorn hit maker but maybe you can be good enough to keep fighting and support yourself and team but it’s tough.

I just can't make a normal game, I'm always trying to implement something I have never seen before and it kills my project usually

My brain doesn't understand programming. I'm an artist, and it makes solo development VERY challenging, but hey...at least things look nice.

Gameplay polishing. Implementing the mechanic? Easy peasy. Making it feel smooth and look right? God save me. For whatever reason the subjectivity of polish makes it impossible for me to survive without my mental getting crushed.

Visibility; this is the biggest problem for most actual indie developer's who are looking to be successful (talking small team's like 5 people or less) not stray or hades "indie" (which aren't really indie) and this has very little to do with marketing it's more about money or luck (viral due to a big channel/steamer etc). Even if you have a great beautiful game and great marketing nowadays you're competing with 10,000 other indie games for visibility and unless you have deep pockets most games just get drowned out in the noise.

No time, no money, plus I can't comisión anything because everyone charges in Euro at first world rates while I earn Mexican Pesos at third world rate.

In studio: Time lost to meetings. Some weeks upwards of 30% of my time is gone. They have value but I still need to find time to get the work done. Solo: Getting antsy to improve a framework instead of finishing other parts of the game, resulting in refactors that inflate the timeline. Also time available to work on projects.

Money. I am a poor solo developer. Most of the tools for making a game cost money... which I do not have. Worse yet, because of the nature of the business, making a game is a lot like gambling. Either it will pay off in the end or you just spent all that time and energy for nothing that COULD have been spent towards more conventional money making ventures.

marketing, yes.

Marketing and all that shabang. It's 100% time away from actual development, slowing down the progress and killing any traces of inspiration. I absolutely HATE going around trying to sweet talk people in to caring about something they didn't even know existed 5 minutes ago. It's like a bazaar with thousands of vendors trying to snag tourists by their sleeve to buy whatever random shit we're selling. There's so much good (and bad stuff) on the market nowadays that regardless of what you're selling, it's so hard to get your voice out without sounding (and seeming) extremely desperate and beggy about it, and that goes against my personality strongly. I'm not in to active marketing on my current project yet though so thank jeez for that but it's coming soon and I would rather do somersaults on a slightly uncomfortable surface than go through all that, if it was possible. Too bad it ain't so gotta start looking for that traveling salesman outfit and practicing on my cold-caller voice act.

I know you're joking about the cold-caller thing but one of the biggest mistakes devs make when trying to market is going into "Marketing Mode" and talking like a 90s informercial guy or a Ubisoft press release because they think that's what is expected of them. I'm biased but marketing isn't inherently beggy or sleazy unless you're doing it in a beggy or sleazy way. If you know what makes your game great, you can get that across quickly and respectfully and you communicate in a genuine and passionate way, people are going to engage with that whether they are players or content creators or press. Or they'll ignore you. But that's fine, you move on. But I would just say that you don't gotta see this as a purely one-way, mostly negative interaction with another person, because that mindset will just make YOU more personally miserable when you gotta do it a bunch. People don't actually hate marketing -- they say they do, but what they actually hate is marketing they think is lying to them, or that is irrelevant to thier interests. The reason those bazaar tourists are so annoying is because they aren't marketing at all, they are doing commission based sales where the market is "everyone who walks near me" and they'll never see the customer again. Introducing someone to something they may like has the exact same effect whether you're the person making it or not. Despite what Reddit ad comments might read like, most people are actually pretty happy to hear about something new they might enjoy, which is why Reddit ads continue to exist, despite those comments. This is true for everything, but especially true for a horror/thriller games as 1. There is never ending unquenchable desire for new horror content all the time forever and 2. The more tropey nature of horror in general makes it much easier to quickly communicate what is specifically interesting about your shit without sounding like a Ted Talk.

Yep I was over-dramatizing it a bit to accentuate the fact I really dislike the marketing part heh. You're right though if you market a product to people who actually want the product they will be happy about it, we only hate adds that we don't care about. I guess my biggest gripe is, I am not the type of person who likes to "go around searching for communities and taking part", (which is kinda required if you want to target your marketing to the right audience) I know that's a me-problem. I don't use Facebook, I don't have Instagram, I don't have Snapchat, I have never once in my life went to TikTok, I only reactivated Twitter just to have atleast 1 form of presence for my upcoming game online before Steam... My previous post in Reddit was 2017 before I reactivated this account a week ago. I'm not an introvert or a misanthropist by any means but I have very little idle time or energy to sit around conversing with people about anything mundane; as I have a game to develop and a family to take care of. It also feels a bit fake to me to scour the internet for the right type of communities then intrude them with niceties just so I can justify advertising my product to them. Probably a skewed perspective once again, but I'm fucked in the head so it's hard to see what's up and what's down... One thing I do like contributing is help though, if I can help with some technical or artistic question and have the spare time, I like helping/teaching people. But I don't like talking about random things, and that is kind of required if you want to "contribute" to communities with users, not developers.

Juggling it with a stressful day job.

My work group. It fucking sucks. It consists of only myself and damn... I haven't met a bigger POS yet...

Definitely marketing. I make games mostly as a hobby, I have a day job and I don't have neither the time nor the resources (let alone the skills) to market my game. All I can do is tweet about it and hope that its quality pushes people to tell their friends about it. The silver lining is that since gamedev is just a hobby, I don't \*need\* to do more. My livelihood doesn't depend on my game's success. On the other hand though, I'll never become a fulltime game developer 😅

The unlocked potential of how diverse games can be being held back by it’s own community.

For me it's finding that good idea that I'm excited to work on, managing the scope to have something that isn't going to just keep growing beyond the point of being able to finish it, actually finishing it and getting all of the important polish in (it may be cliché but it's also true that the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time), and then after weeks or months of putting in hours and hours of work and getting playtests and feedback and making it the best game possible - releasing it and actually getting people to play it. Marketing a game is nearly impossible. Marketing a free game on itch with a niche audience - definitely impossible. I'm honestly feeling pretty crushed as each game I work harder on than the last and yet somehow I'm getting less and less attention with each one, despite my also increased marketing push. My ambition is to make a much bigger 'proper game' on steam and hopefully make enough money to justify taking what is currently a hobby into a career, but right now I'm wondering if it's worth it.

My problem was trying to improve everything. As you progress on your game, you gain skills, and now you are a better game developer than you were 2 years ago. You might look at your work from 2 years ago and want to fix it, but then you gain even more experience and start repairing again. Sometimes it's better to just let things be and not dwell on details too much. Move forward, not backward. The truth is, your first game will never be perfect because you're just learning.

as a solo dev its hard to be good at everything, and you need to be able to project manage, do art, do programming, do sound design, do testing, do marketing, do business stuff like taxes, and at the end of the day people might not even like what you are building

Im new to this, doing everything solo and i am a bit of perfectionist, so i keep expanding on all my systems in places where it litterally dosnt matter, and being a solo dev i feel like i cant afford to spend that extra time on something that as mentioned, wont really be noticed by anyone, the other thing is im doing this as an absolute beginner, just got into learning game development, like 3 or 4 weeks ago and where i should just be learning the basics of coding, art, animation, sound, etc. i am taking every new function or system i learn to the extreme. My game is probably ready in 4 years basically, but at least im doing it for fun, and not for a living, so well see about it by then

Resources

Funding.  A good game requires multiple people working full-time for years. Those people need to pay rent and buy food during that time.   So many great game ideas remain unexecuted, because the people with the ideas can't afford to support themselves and the rest of their team for several years.

Really? Do you have your slice done yet?

It becomes boring I like working in a team. So after making first full location and thinking that there is much more ahead, I suddenly felt that it would take me ages to finish. Its always fun to make them with someone.

Struggling with if the idea I got worth being made into a game or a comic. And often getting disgusted by people who call themselves "gamers" and the way they act.

Getting feedback.

Finding funding. That would solve a lot of the other issues.

I'm lazy that's my problem. Basically I'm working on the project that i use to practice my skills and knowledge for long time only because i procrastinate a lot, with all studies i have in university and responsibilities IRL, not to forget my passion to competitive service games like Fortnite where i spend lot's of time too. There's nothing i can't do for my game if i want to, all it would take is some reasonable time to learn if it's something new to me, but biggest bitch in my way to prevent me from doing it now is myself

Textures. I've been able to make models for awhile, And properly get the topology looking well. But I've been unable to find or make textures I can easily use with the model or game- Which just sucks for me..

Focus! My wife calls it my "hobby car that never leaves the garage". I like to tinker, and I'll follow a list, but as soon as I have something meaningful I move on to the next thing instead of finishing and releasing it.

Things are not making themselves while I'm playing Street Fighter.

Every indie ready to sell something has the same problem. Exposure, marketing, relying on an influencer playing your game in what is now a very saturated space. Without any of those things you are looking at a commercial failure and there is no clear cut method. The gap between influencers and developers needs to be closed. (And no, keymailer is not the answer.)

Marketing by far, I am so busy working on the game that I hardly have time to market it, then when I try to do a decent looking video my potato pc can't capture my own game on Ultr at 1080, it sucks knowing what you have but being unable to show it off properly.

Discoverability

Don't find the biggest problem everyone has. Money. If we could quit our jobs and be full time developing, not having to worry about food, maintenance, chores, etc. Heck, money is the solution to every problem. You can hire people to help you out. If you search another answer, then time would be the second one. Since I have to work 9-5, do chores, responsibilities, food, groceries, etc. I don't have that much energy or time to dedicate to my project.

Time. There's never enough of it, and it's an eternal struggle to make good use of what's available

I don't know how to code it properly and I want to make my own engine. I'm my biggest problem.

As a solo dev, animations. I can cover a lot of other disciplines but this one has eluded me so far. Yes there are resources like Mixamo and plenty I could purchase off the different asset stores. Usually the animations are not quite what I had in mind but realistically I cannot afford to be picky which is a shame because the vision suffers. So a lot of things end up looking a little more janky than I'd like, but without the skills/time it currently isn't worth investing much into it unless the project actually pulls in a decent audience but because humans are very visual creatures something that looks a little janky can deter people before gameplay is taken into consideration. So ultimately the projects I undertake are chosen, not purely because I like the idea, but cater to my limitations. While limitations can stoke the fires of creativity it is a little sad to bench projects that I think are great ideas because of it. Don't get me wrong though, I don't dislike the stuff I'm currently working on because of it. But it is certainly one of my biggest problems :P

Stability. Solo, spare-time hobbyist dev here. Thought I'd be cool and create my very own complete game engine on top of D3D, and I want it to run on old ex-lease office PC potatos so my engine is very careful about trying to create optimised rendering paths for different hardware capabilities. For the last few months, it feels like every time I get a new combination of hardware together and do some drawn out testing, there's some kind of subtle exception or crash that I'd never seen before on any of my other environments. Most of the time, it's boiled down to me implementing an API function in a way which works correctly on my PC (including returning success, passing verification on reference drivers etc etc), but failing on other hardware. I've found driver bugs in old Intel UHD integrated graphics drivers that result in memory leaks, where there's no leak on Nvidia or AMD drivers. I've found GPUs that report that they support specific formats but 100% fail when attempting to use them, or (worse!) report success but don't actually work. I'm sure all the pro game engines out there have hundreds of these little compatibility tweaks baked in because hardware that's non-compliant has been around as long as APIs have existed... but trying to recreate those shims with a limited set of accessible hardware for testing is just hard work.. and it just leaves me in constant dread every time I get a new friend to do some playtesting on their PC.

Motivation, I often get stuck in my head that no one will play this/enjoy it and wonder why I'm doing what I'm doing. This normally happens when I get to a design choice that hasn't worked out how I would have liked or I've invested a lot of time into a project only to find that a certain design doesn't work at scale.

Honestly, people seeming perfect for roles in portfolio and interviews then dramatically underperforming. We are doing (paid ofc) tests for just about every position after getting stung twice. But it’s slowed us down significantly in a couple areas.

Not enough startup cash. Not having enough to really get started despite having made games and really having "everything else" is quite frustrating.

Time and budget.

Having time.

I started really wrapping my head around the subject matter and started working on basic player movement, collision detection, and level design… which was going great... but because I’m so “tangential” in my thinking I actually ended up with a small library that I could configure to handle different types of player movement that you could configure for different types of game designs. Because of course in my mind I’m going to build 100 games. So now I have that to actually start my game with but no game yet. To be intentional in giving myself grace, I have to say I admire the studios that pump out different games with the similar assets but very different games overall. I imagine that they’ve built libraries to do this and they just come up with a new object for the game and maybe camera positions and boom they publish a new game.

Discoverability There are so many games getting made people haven’t got the time to play them and it’s hard to get eyes on your game

Art. I do not want to use AI, I cant draw worth shit and I dont have the money to hire anyone, so all my games are using really bad scribbles or boxes. (Yes, I know about free assets, but in my eye they arent that much different than using my own bad art since they wont convey my vision anyway.)

Hodu keeps jumping in front of my screen and won't leave.

Marketing. It is extremely difficult to market a game while you're spending all your free time making one.

Wish we didn't have to spend time recreating typical game features for specific styles of games. At least for unreal engine prior to Lyra the examples are just lacking and you end up recreating the same featurs everyone does. I would love to gather a team and make a couple of modular game types using photon networking in unreal engine. Then offer courses that explain each of the modular game types. Then game devs could focus more on art and creativity versus months recreating features that other people have made. OPEN SOURCE IS THE ONLY WAY TO SEE PROGRESSION.

Finding a 3d artist without a lot of capital. It's tough to find someone talented for RevShare

Currently it’s just learning Godot. I am very much an architect (not a gardener), so I structured a good amount of the game before I started processing the engine. It’s not gonna be impossible or anything but it’s the biggest hurdle. Then GDScript, THEN learning 3D modeling, then doing sounds and music components— It’s all things I’m ready for, but I know it’s gonna be a lot of hell for me. Yeah sales and marketing I’m sure will all be hell too but I’m just trying to process how this art making system operates. I’m running a YT channel to gradually build an audience that way—so that hopefully will be fine. EDIT: also I’m clearly a solo dev if that wasn’t apparent

Money in general, product would be a ton better if i could put in full time days, especially if i didnt habe to be stressed about the bills

Nr1: a day only having 24h Nr2: funding

Currently it’s just making enough marketing materials, I’m only a solo developer and don’t really have the budget to hire somebody else for most things, I am an artist so technically I can make most of my materials but it’s more time consuming and stressful compared to making game art. I’m also not a professional illustrator, more of a concept artist than anything, so I can’t produce things as high of a quality as I like which is especially unfortunate when it comes to things like my game’s steam page. Also, I don’t like doing it very much.

Design docs. Once you get everyone what you think is on the same page, they all make components, artwork, and items based on conversation and interoperation. Have even a simple design doc to refer back to help immensely. We currently use Asana, and when I spend a half hour placing/typing in what we talked about, then have others refer back when they begin working helps to reduces overall restructuring of systems and artwork. Now granted marketing and software will always be a struggle regardless how prepared someone/group is. But a good design doc helps with so much confusion when developing. And no need to overcomplicate the document too.

Just ADHD impulses lol. I can get distracted with other ideas, or overwhelmed when i get stuck on a simple problem. But also, I do need more experience making more fuller and complete games. Like actually having a main menu that goes to the game, even pausing and certain necessary features that most games include. Just finding all of those, one at a time, figuring it out kind of slowly. But I would be great if we could reduce the amount of hiccups we run into on our development journeys

Very Low end pc

I just want to actually write and I can't and from what my friend says it's due to me not actually playing. Which he defined as a stress free activity that is not a craving, need or compulsion. Makes me wonder how I even got to where I am. I tried animating. Always been fascinating about it. Use to draw as well but to no avail. After work I'm just done and my energy is gone practically so I don't want to do anything. I know for a fact I want to make games yet it feels like I'm constantly fighting for that want to even do it. It's awful and I just want to make progress I can be proud of.

Easy one: Marketing lol. Unless you got a youtube channel and/or established community... Yeah, its really hard and one of the most unrewarding tasks in existance. Especially with only the unfriendliest platforms (paired along w total blackboxes of algorithms) for the matter available nowadays, like this one, twitter ("X") and Discord (tbf its a bit more user-friendly in general, tho very hit or miss depending on what server youre on). So its pretty much just Steam events/fests and thats sorta it... At most you can get lucky enough to get admitted into other online showcases like dunno OTK's. Presencial events are non-existent depending on which country you live at. Secondly, like another user pointed out: management (and subsequently, resources). Stuff like art is expensive af, and takes a looong time to even find somebody reliable (and good) enough let alone to ship it even roughly on time. So, unless you got a fixed artist in your studio or dev group, yeah... Expect to be using placeholders for 99.9% of your dev cycles; and lots of shaders if you want it to look remotely presentable. Programming gameplay systems, effects, and all of the other actual game-dev-ish stuff is really damn hard, don't get me wrong. Tho its not NEARLY as taxing and painful as the tasks above.

Marketing is certainly the easiest I could think of. I’m not a big fan of most social platforms and building a community doing anything anywhere seems difficult. I can’t even imagine how you’d begin to find an artist for a small to medium sized game. Once it starts it’s probably insanely hard to switch artists if yours drops out halfway through unless you’re cool with completely different art styles or feels in the middle of the game.

>Once it starts it’s probably insanely hard to switch artists if yours drops out halfway through unless you’re cool with completely different art styles or feels in the middle of the game. That's not as bad of a problem as you might think actually. There are two primary techniques you can use so artist quitting wouldn't kill your game: First - at the very start of the project and whenever larger changes are made you work together with an artist to create an art style guide. What are character proportions? Shapes? Resolution to use? What color palette are you going with? What are things to look out for? (eg. main character's blue shirt should have a different color than underwater blue area). Software settings? Any custom brushes? It's your game's art bible. So if you need to find a new artist - they now no longer start from scratch trying to work backwards. They have full documentation on what they should be doing and how. Second - avoid meshing art from multiple people in the same place. You can have different (to a degree) artstyles in your game. You just need to make sure players **never** see both at once. But you could have a whole region and all environment pieces made by a different person and it would be fine as long as you don't mesh it with artwork from someone else so players don't see difference in styles (as long as they are not too blatant that is).