What it feels like to finish making a game
Hallå my pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
Yesterday I went to explore an old abandoned mining facility with some friends. I love going to places like this.
My toes went numb, it was about -20c and the snow was a little deep. But we don’t let that stop us. It just means we get the place to ourselves.
I can’t think of a smooth transition into the next part. So uh, now I’ll talk a bit about game dev!
What it feels like to finish making a game
(spoiler free)
From what I’ve seen and heard about other people’s experiences with releasing games it’s supposed to be completely nerve wracking. But that’s not been my experience so far.
I have a folder with thousands of images like this, of little (and big) bugs. These past 3 years we’ve been fixing and REFIXING hundreds of issues like this daily.
It’s rare that I stop and take a screenshot because I find something in the game to be pretty (which it is don’t worry), it’s just that I’m chasing down everything that’s wrong about it, so I’m not paying as much attention to what is nice about it.
It’s progressively getting harder for me to find things to work on since the art is basically done and we’re completely done with all the content and features. So I’m fine combing the entire game to make sure it all works as expected, which is quite a big job because there’s actually a lot of content if you wanna see everything. The procedural nature of the game also makes it harder to track everything down. I’m often asking myself “will this thing ever appear or is it just very rare?” I log the complicated bugs for Jasper to solve while I take care of the ones that are doable for me.
We have had and will have a bit more QA to help us out with testing too. But there are things that only me and Jasper can tell if they’re working as intended. For instance outsiders will have absolutely no idea whether a story beat fails to activate unless they already know something’s supposed to be there (and how could they).
The duration between bugs are getting longer every day now. On the whole I feel satisfied with where we’re at, it’s starting to feel complete.
The other day we were having a chat with our composer and he said he was concerned that we are rushing it. That we should put at least another month into it. Which is a super fair concern. There was nothing wrong about bringing that up, I totally get where he’s coming from. And we are putting another month into it, so there’s no real disagreement. But for some reason that remark still frustrated me, I think because even the idea of dragging this out more scares me. This was first supposed to be a 6 month project, then 1.5 years, then 2 and now we’re past 3. And I haven’t paid myself a steady salary since the beginning of last year, I’ve just been living of savings and a few freelance jobs. My limit has nearly been reached.
Either way, we are gonna keep doing small improvements and fixes up until it actually releases and we will find more stuff to fix once it’s in the hands of real players as well. So the project isn’t really over just because it’s out either. It feels more like it’s the next chapter rather than the end of the book (a great book).
If you remember our game announcement, we said we would be releasing the game in 2023. Which didn’t happen. And we’re still not 100% sure what the release date will be, but we know for sure that it’s happening this year. What could possibly happen to extend it another year now? (knock on wood)
Despite all this I’ve been bursting with new game ideas and am eager to jump into the next one. I have to hold myself back a little.
Mini Notes
👀 GDC Talk Transcript - Games should stop taking inspiration from other games
This guy made a popular mobile game, lots of clones popped up. He was disappointed by those clones because he wished they would’ve used his starting prompt (most minimalist game possible) and done something different with it, instead of just blatantly copying his take on that prompt. What if all these copycats had tried to make their own minimalist games? It’s a shame all their effort was wasted doing exactly what he did.
📝 Article - In Praise of Messy Game Design
The way games are made lead most games to be quite neat or empty. They’re centered around one core mechanic because doing more than that introduces more room for error and stringing it all together becomes way more complex the more stuff you introduce. But still, it’s lovely when messy weird stuff makes it into any game. Like the pee mechanic in Death Stranding. That game is still quite centered though. I can’t think of any game that is REALLY MESSY and great.
✏️ Course - Draw A Box
This is a free online drawing course. I stumbled on it by chance somewhere and got intrigued by what they might teach. I know I’m lacking in some fundamentals so I started investigating it to see what exercises they had about perspective. But I got sucked in and started going through the course from the beginning. I didn’t realize how or why you should draw with your wrist, elbow or shoulder. Details with the wrist, long straight lines from your shoulder. I think the elbow is for whatever is in-between that?
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Take care and have a creative week.
Exploring is fun! The golden-blue contrast on snow always enchants me.
Happy to know you're getting there with your game, that's huge!
> he wished they would’ve used his starting prompt and done something different with it
I love it! There are so many ways for process to lead to product.
> Despite all this I’ve been bursting with new game ideas and am eager to jump into the next one. I have to hold myself back a little.
Me too! I have this thought that if I give up on my current idea (which I still believe in), then the new idea won't get any more finished than the current one. So I give the current idea as much work as I *would* want give the new one, for work habit.
You seem to be doing well.
Loved this one! More GDC talk recommendations please:) And congrats on being close to the finish line, best of luck! Can't wait to play the game soon!!