Earlier, while having a look at X.com (formerly Twitter), I came across a post by another solo indie dev explaining how finishing a game as a solo indie dev doesn't really get enough praise.
Finishing a game as a solo dev deserves way more praise than it gets.
— CodeRed (@CodeRed_dev) October 18, 2025
It got me thinking about my own journey, and that I am, myself, nearing that point of finishing the process of making a game. As much as I would like praise, £1 million, and a standing ovation, it's not realistic. My only real hope is that it gets some attention and that people enjoy playing it.
I have taken the relatively safe option of making a game that is quite simple in terms of design, mechanics and graphics. It looks as it should, plays as it should and is a "game". It might be simple and, while based on an arcade classic, has been built from the ground up.
All over social media, I see people trying to make games and make progress, and the inevitable idea of imposter syndrome happens when I see people who have invested time and money into their projects. They look closer to the sort of games you see being released everyday. They're normally 3D, with a fleshed out world, more mechanics than you can shake a stick at, and have probably been worked on for several years at least.
As much as I want to get to the point of making those sort of games, my own circumstances prevent me from being able to allocate the time required to make everything they seem to have in their games by myself in a way that would keep the process fun.
My own view on this is that, because I am starting with nothing, that I should start small. Release a simple game, learn the process of polishing, testing and releasing my games, then make the next game a bit more complex, and then the next one after that.
I want to get to the eventual point of doing this full time, but I also want it to succeed. To make it succeed, I need to learn the process, and improve my own methods as time progresses.
I also find myself realising that most of the developers making their games for years and working towards the idea of a fully fleshed out world with loads of mechanics that I end up seeing, normally have used their own savings to take time off work to be able to make their dream a reality, or to purchase services to help them make their games. I also see others that spend years on a game, only to drop the project for some reason or another. And then there's others that realise that to really find some success, they need to think about what success means to them, and then reshape their activities to work towards that vision.
I started this journey with nothing, and really I still have nothing from it at the moment. My vision of success however, is to be able to use game development to support myself. To do that I need to release games and have those games earn some money.
I don't expect my current project to make me millions, as I've said, it's a simple game based on an arcade classic. My financial outlay for the project is just the $25 fee to become a developer on Google Play.
I have not bought assets, software, code or anything else that is used throughout the lifecycle of the project. I made all of my own assets (apart from the fonts), coded the project from the ground up, and I am planning, initially at least, to rely on social media to market the project.
While I know my time has value, over the last 2 years, I have been learning. This project was originally aimed at being a personal test to see if I could make a game in a day (I got most of it together for a rough prototype). So, while my time has value, it is almost like an investment at the moment. The realisation of the value of my time will be when I can release a successful game and use it to support myself.
So, for my game to be successful for me, it only needs to make $26 US. After that point, any money made by the game is raw profit for me to invest in game dev, or keep for myself. This view comes from the idea in business that for a business to be viable, it only needs to make profit, so $1, or £1 of profit for me proves the concept that I can make money using game dev. After that point, making more money is just about refining the process, from generating game ideas to completing those games for sale and publishing.
As it presently stands, I make all of my own assets, and write all my own code. I will use sample code to get in idea of how to do things a certain way, but will then rewrite, tweak and adjust the code to fit my own purposes. This is more work, but it means everything I create is unique, and it also means that I own it. If I end up with a successful game, or project and I want to be able to make branded products, I can, if I want to reuse assets in other games, or media, I can. If I want to look at selling the assets themselves, or the IP, I can.
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