Making a Full Game By Yourself With a Full Time Job

Week 6

William's Game 

This marks the sixth week I've been working on my game, currently under the working title "Bone Boy in Blob World."  At this point in any full-time development schedule, I would have most of the main game mechanics fleshed out and maybe even some fairly developed early game levels.

However, this isn't a full-time development schedule.  Unlike with many of my previous projects, I've been developing Bone Boy in-between a full-time day job.  Not just any full-time job- a full-time job that I also spend at least two and a half hours on commuting every work day.  This, combined with extreme ADD, means I have to be really conscious of how I'm budgeting my time in order to be an efficient developer.

So, have I been succeeding so far?

Realistic Project Scoping

Week 5

Gabe's Game

Indies have less time, less money, and fewer people than AAA studios. So scoping your game to be within your abilities is imperative to success.

Which of the above images is more pleasing to look at? I used the same objects for both, in the same room, so they are equal, right? Obviously not, the images only have a few resources but A clearly takes better advantage of them. First of all, A combines the resources, allowing them to compliment each other. Secondly, it focuses the viewers eye in on the resources, keeping your gaze from wandering into less interesting portions of the scene. For B, you may or may not know what's missing, but what any person can do, is identify where information is lacking. Making games is similar.

Creating an Intelligence to Outsmart

Week 4 

William's Game 

For the past couple weeks, I've been working on making the enemies for my game work.  For a stealth game, an enemy's AI could end up carrying a lot of the gameplay's weight.  Being stealth is, after all, all about outsmarting and outmaneuvering a reactive foe.

And... this.

So, between my extremely time consuming job and the commute that comes with it, I've been working on designing my enemy AI.

Early Art: Finding Efficient Style

Week 3

Gabe's Game

On an indie team, being efficient with your time is important. As a solo developer, it's imperative. Traditionally, when adventuring into the early artist process for video games, you'll have piles of concept art, mood sketches, character concepts, often even prop art concepts. You'll find an art team deliberating over details in a way an individual just can't. So how am I possibly going to make an attractive game solo? By being strategically artistic.