How NOT to make an indie game

Tbh, this was actually really inspiring

this game is extremely visually appealing

So basically: "Core game loop needs to be fun, everything else is icing on the cake and comes from iteration". Difficulty in mastering will keep dedicated players coming back for more, and the core mechanics need to be easy to learn to make people stick around for at least one full iteration of the core game loop, so they get the best experience out of it.

“I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” - Edison

Got it, Prototypes are key

Sneezing mechanic, now that is innovative!

"the first year was disheartening" me: you should be happy your character can even move

Marketting is a really underatted process if a game's success. You have to make sure people know your game somehow. This video is a very creative way to market a game. Showing how awful the creation process was. But goddamn it works. Now I want to play your game

Patch Quest: How not to make an indie game YandereDev: How to not make an indie game

looking at the footage and seeing how finished the tests look, im thinking maybe using placeholders wouldve saved a lot of time haha

"The only way to write good code is to write bad code first" I think this applies to everything: Playing games, writing, designing, making a game, making a movie, a sport, anything. I really enjoyed this video and your journey, thank you for sharing it with us!

Ah, it seems you fell for one of the classic blunders: Finishing assets before making sure the game is fun to play even with crappy, stand-in assets. Don't get me wrong, they looked awesome! And everybody wants to turn what they see in their heads into reality as soon as possible, and that's 90% visuals, MAYBE 10% gameplay, but a game with MS paint assets that is extremely polished gameplay-wise will always beat a beautiful, boring game. Really glad you got it all on track, though! Will definitely be keeping an eye out for this one. Best of luck!

Awesome video! Game Development is definitely very tricky and everyone has their own journey, that final version looks great! And all the time you spent iterating on all those ideas was definitely not lost! All of that experience gave you a ton of knowledge on what works and what doesn't. It will greatly benefit you for many years and many games to come. Btw the Steam link in the description is broken, it just goes to the Steam homepage.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas Edison is exactly what I thought about when you talked about how those years weren’t wasted but actually helped at 20:22-20:42

I really love how you step back and were brave enough to critizice your own work in that way. If I realized my game isnt good after three years of work, I would just publish it as it is and cry for the rest of my life. Great and trully inspiring video.

19:16 "...most games can actually be described this way, as a twist on something that came before..." All of human creation and ingenuity can be described this way

So I take this as a "draw the eye before the eyebrow" type of mistake, except the eye is the concept and the eyebrow is the structure of the game and you drew a very nice eyebrow but oh god it's on his forehead

To be frank, i lowkey loved the idea of being an explorer on a strange and dangerous land having to figure out the way through dangerous terrain. It seems like that idea disappeared on the later development.

The concept of Minimum Viable Product has really helped me when it comes to considering where to go with my projects. The idea is you strip your game down to its absolute most basic systems in order to function and then you consider "is this fun?" "Is this a concept people will have fun playing?" The reality is if you game isnt even fun in it's base form then whatever fun features you add to the game will be on the back of an unfun base

I love stories like this. I’m an aspiring game developer and it always gives me hope to see other indie devs finishing successful passion projects like this.