3 ms·
A lot of small games are done by indies who pretty much only does it out of pure passion(am one can confirm) but with just how laborious gamedev is, indies can
by fsnowdin 6y ago
A lot of small games are done by indies who pretty much only does it out of pure passion(am one can confirm) but with just how laborious gamedev is, indies can only really do small but polished games.
I'm working on a small game right now (probably 3 or 4 hours in length) and the amount of work to do to get it to an acceptable state for release is gigantic. And that's after some serious downsizing in content.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoThat said, some indies start out with a 'prototype' or 'hackathon' version, then take it to Kickstarter to flesh it out to a full version; Celeste (which I mentioned elsewhere) started off as a Pico-8 game built in 4 days and was then built as a full title. Didn't actually see a Kickstarter campaign for that one. Another game I'm playing and enjoying right now is Hollow Knight, which started off as a poorly received game jam entry , then a Kickstarter which raised a modest sum (less than 50K), and now it's a highly acclaimed title with nearly 3 million units sold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Knight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Knight).
- fsnowdin 6y agoYeah, game jams are an awesome way to brute-force the ideas to come out and many a great titles have started out from jams. The project I'm working first came into being as an entry for a 48-hour jam back in March. I've continually worked on it since, with pauses here and there due to life stuff. Celeste probably didn't have a Kickstarter because the studio behind it (Matt Makes Games) was already pretty mature, having already shipped hits like Towerfall. Contrast that to Hollow Knight's Team Cherry who basically had to bootstrap themselves throughout the development process with literally only 3 people.