Can you make a video game all by yourself?
I don’t know yet, someone can, I don’t know yet if I am capable of it. It is more than just the technical skills, but when there is no one else on the team, who do you bounce idea’s off of, how do you get to the finish line without just giving up.
There are some examples of successful “Solo” devs, but I haven’t seen a successful game that was truly solo. Stardew Valley is an excellent example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardew_Valley
Eric Barone, aka ConcernedApe was the sole developer on Stardew Valley, doing the design, art, programming, and music compositions all himself. However, he was not a team of one. He gained attention early on for the game through Steam Greenlight and Reddit. The publisher ChuckleFish approached him, and took over many responsibilities making it possible for him to be the sole creative developer, but handling many other things, such as a testing, and setting up the game’s wiki which was instrumental in the game having such a successful launch.
There are certain genre’s that lend themselves more to solo dev. Such as Hyper Casual mobile games, but I am really writing about games that normally require a full team to create. For people not in the Industry, it is probably a shock just how large a team is often required to make a game that on the surface looks rather small.
Personally, I don’t know if I could make a game all by myself. By making a game, I mean completion and publishing, bug-free, that meets the initial design without cutting out too much. I kind of want to find out.
Where to start?
Well, first off, what game am I going to make? I have a dozen half-baked ideas, and poorly thought-through genre mashups to choose from, but that is the problem. If I only had one idea it would be simpler. Picking something means I am stuck with it, and in it, for the next few years. So, I need to pick a game idea that is really worth sharing with the world.
A side scrolling rpg rougelike with weapon, item, and skill progression where you are a homeless combat veteran going on your healing shamanic journey, first healing and freeing yourself, and then others, by going into another dimension and battling an evil energy that corrupted the Aztec priests into performing human sacrifices.
There, that’s a few years of my life.
Secondly, in what art style will the game be made. It has to be something I can do myself. I went to Art School, but my focus was always on programming, so while I know how to use a bunch of art programs, I don’t consider myself an Artist.
Pixel Art seems a good choice. So, to make things simple, the game will be pixel art.
Now for music and sound effects. I think I will not attempt this, and will purchase, and/or collaborate with a composer. I have several connections for audio.
Lastly, I am not set in stone that I will remain the only developer, so it is not selling out if the team grows, but I would like to make the prototype myself, setting the initial controls, style and main mechincs. Willing to collaborate after that.
Here’s the hardest question.
What game engine do I use?
It is easy for me to choose what engine I will not use. It will not be a Unity game. I really dislike the workflow in Unity, and I have worked on enough projects with it to have given it a fair chance.
I have used Unreal Engine since 2007, so I am quite familiar with it. My current day job I spend all my time in Unreal Engine 4. However, I do not think it is the best engine to use for making a solo game, and while it has some tools for 2D games, it is not complete.
GameMaker it is.
I have only used GameMaker for one gamejam, in 2017. I know that it can be extended in C++, so it is not limited to just using their Visual Scripting language, but, I do not have much experience with it. It can export to many platforms. Some very fun Indie games have been made in it. Crashlands https://store.steampowered.com/app/391730/Crashlands/ was made in it. And, Hyper Light Drifter https://store.steampowered.com/app/257850/Hyper_Light_Drifter/ was also made in it.
Next, is picking some development tools. For making the pixel art, AseSprite https://www.aseprite.org/ looks solid. I have a Adobe CC license, but Photoshop is honestly a bit complicated for me to setup and use for pixel art creation and sense I don’t even consider myself an Artist, I’ll go with a purpose-built tool for pixel art.
Hosting the project. Source Control. Most important thing when making a video game is source control. When, not if, everything breaks, you need to be able to hit undo on your project. At work, I work for Heart Machine, we use Perforce. My last Indie game that published we used Plastic SCM. For this, I think I will use GitLab to host it. I am most comfortable using git, and I have a GitKraken license that is going unused at the moment.
Code Editing. I am not familiar yet in using C++ in GameMaker, but I am assuming and code editor would work. I end up using Visual Studio Community edition for almost everything, but CLion looks like a promising alternative. I need to get some more info on C++ in Game Maker before I decide.
I intend to blog my progress as I go along. Not as a tutorial, but more like a work log with commentary. I definitely plan on using an iterative process, so I am not going to design the game upfront on paper, instead, I will experiment with controls first and get the core combat mechanic before anything else.
