So, here’s my first monthly update, and what a month it has been!

Blender Renders: 2 out of 12

I finished my first two renders earlier this month. First I made a Power Cell animation from the game Jak and Daxter, then I made a render of the Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda. Getting two done in January is a good start since I don’t think I’ll be able to keep pace of 2 renders per month now that I’ve started my full-time job.

I would like to do another simple render next month. Nothing too crazy with the model itself, and something where I can play around a bit more with composition and lighting. I’ll see how it goes in 4 weeks!

Personal Game Devlog: What to make? (I ramble a lot here)

In between preparing for my move to Edinburgh and making some Blender renders, I spent a bit of time figuring out what game I want to make by myself this year. Just like everybody else, I have a ton of game ideas. But ideas are cheap and execution is what counts. So before I actually make a game, I need to decide on what idea interests me the most and to be honest I’m in a proper state of analysis paralysis right now. Suffice to say, I haven’t decided yet…

Why can’t I decide on a game idea? I’m definitely overthinking it a lot, but here are a few problems:

Overscoping

Most of the concepts I am interested in end up as games with a scope so large that it would require a team to make and therefore would be completely unreasonable to develop solo in a few months. Everyone who has ever tried to make a game runs into this issue right away. Thankfully, I’ve gotten better at recognising when the scope is unrealistic. Unlike when I was a teenager, I know I cannot make an MMO by myself. But a single-player immersive-sim RPG? So tempting, I’d love to do it, but still too ambitious for one person…

Uninterested in making “tiny” games

Yes, I know that the classic advice is to make tiny games and in doing so you slowly learn the technical skills required to make larger ones. That is definitely great advice – I have learned a ton by making games as part of 1 Game a Week. There’s still an ocean of things I still need to learn but I just don’t want to keep making tiny games. So that’s why I’m trying to go for something a bit larger than what I’ve done before, while still giving myself time to work on it.

October soft deadline

I’ve already given myself a soft deadline of October to release a game. I also want to make a game that is larger than what I’ve made before. I think that’s a reasonable timeline, but I want to be confident in the game’s vision so that I don’t pivot the project halfway through and suddenly I’m targeting April 2024 as a release date.

Part-time Project

Even though October is a few months away, I will have a limited amount of time to work on this solo game project since I’m prioritising my day job. So with that in mind, I think it makes sense to make a game that plays it safe with the design so that it requires less playtesting to validate ideas. Not saying I’m going to make a complete ripoff of another game, but maybe I’ll play it relatively safe when picking the game I want to develop.

While writing this post I came across an article by PC Gamer that talks about how indie devs are creating “micro” RPGs, and it got me thinking about my own goals for game development projects. I realised that I end up thinking of trying to make games that are either commercial in scope, or are a stepping stone to a commercial project. Which to be honest I don’t think is the right way for me to make games solo.

I also think that if I immediately aim for the end result of “a game that makes money”, I’m going to act in a risk averse manner and not make anything creative or original, which won’t be very fun. So I think I should really not worry too much about the game having broad appeal and instead try my best to make a small interesting and unique experience, that resonates with a small audience. Which seems obvious to be honest, considering that people don’t go to indie sites like itch.io for mainstream hits.

This section has gone on for longer thatn I would have liked and there’s still a hundred different thoughts I have about this. But as I said at the start, I’m overthinking this.

So I think the best approach is to take an idea for a small game and see how much I can expand it, rather than take an idea for a large game and try to shrink it down. It’s like writing Tetris and then adding rules and modes to expand the scope, instead of starting with something like a CRPG where removing something can destroy the game balance and experience.

I’m going to stop now because I’ve overthought this way too much and I really just need to start sorting my game ideas so I can prototype the low complexity ones.

Thank you for reading my rambling devlog, next one is going to be more coherent!