How long did it took you to build your first game?

I think mobile games are an excellent start for a beginner. My philosophy is once you're ready to make you first game, you should not dedicate half a century to release it. Keep it simple and don't spend more than 3-4 months. Unless you have years of experience and a successful track record or you're working on a good team, developing serious long term projects never seems to be the best idea.

Take every big successful indie game out there, and I'm not talking about the lucky ones like flappy bird, but games with hype behind them before release, and you'll see that its creators have plenty of experience.

 

Way older than that. Apple donated one of the early Apple II's to my high school in the summer of 1979 and it came with a version of this game. It was artillery guns. You could set the gun tube angle and choose the number of bags of powder to use. You're definitely right, though, that this game could be made over and over.

 

Nearly 8 years for my first proper game that I will be releasing commercially.

I'll be doing a full-post mortem write up soon on these forums, so stay posted

 

Holy...
I'm here since 2009 and I saw quite a lot longer projects. But 8 years... Wow! That's some dedication. I really hope that pays out for you.

 

I heard this type of thinking alot, and I really dont understand it. Reality seems to contradict it since we have actual historical fact we can measure.

There are very high quality indie games, even "big ideas", done by a single person in a few years time.

Stardew Valley is a perfect example.

One person did literally everything & the game is packed with features, content, gorgeous artwork, animation, & music. Polished to perfection, and incredibly successful. Belongs to a genre far more complex than some lame platformer.

There are plenty of other games done this way. Neo scavenger was created by one person who did everything, and it is a bit complicated.

And in 10 years, one person made Dwarf Fortress. In those 10 years, they've added like a trillion features that no other game can compete with. Unearthly depth.

Even using hyperbole, saying 10-30 is simply false. It wouldn't even take someone that long to learn the skills necessary to make a dream game, let alone complete one.

What surprises me though? That many here are reported 8 months for the simplest games imaginable. Interesting, because by the time one of them released 3 atari games, 2 years would pass. 6 atari simple practicals just wont sell as well as 1 stardew valley complex dream. That makes me question how worthwhile it is to chase any game other than your dream. Not just on a financial level, but especially in the context of career satisfaction.

 

No matter how you spin it, it's very risky working on a project alone for years. I would say the historical data shows that most indie games developed don't succeed, and those that do usually have some very experienced people behind them.

I guess the best question to ask yourself is if you want to take this path, are you willing to accept it and be happy with your life if you spend 5+ years developing a game and it fails? That's a lot of time and multiple smaller games could be developed. This is why my idea of working on a big game usually involves a team, it's better you spend a year or two developing it than 5 plus.

 

You can cherry pick examples all you want. If you take a random sample of games developed by small teams or individuals, however, the story you'll see is quite different. Naturally we all feel like we're different and that norms don't apply to us... but the same applies to the vast majority of the developers who made the games in the sample, too.

Don't just think you're different. Assume you're the same, and figure out how to make yourself different.

Stardew Valley took a classic business approach of identifying a problem (the Harvest Moon series was no longer what he wanted it to be) that applied to an identifiable market and then creating a solution and selling it to that market. On top of that the developer was a trained programmer and seems to have had prior artistic skills. He won't have been unique in those things, but it's certainly not a description that would apply to most of the game developers I know. Of the presumably many developers who do fit a similar description, we're aware of this one developer because of Survivorship Bias - he is easily visible because his game is successful (though I bet the inverse applies - he is successful because he did a great job of making his game visible).

When someone says it took them 8 months to make a simple game I think that's potentially pretty reasonable, especially if they're learning as they go and/or have a job and/or study and/or have other commitments. (But also, "8 months" is a useless measurement of time. Is that ~1300 hours of full-time equivalent work, or ~120 hours of tinkering alongside everything else you do?)

Also, plenty of "simple" games I've made are ~2 weeks to get gameplay implemented followed by several months of playtesting and tweaking and content and polish. Lots of people who've never actually released a commercial game do the first two weeks and then wonder why everyone else takes so long. Making your game functional isn't the end, it's the start.

 

Do you have any examples of games developed by a single person for 5+ years that failed once released?

There are plenty of examples of games never released & reports like "working on a game for 8 years".
However most of the indie businesses I see fail; solo people who surrender; They are usually makers of small mobile games which make some but not enough or none.

I see a lot of "My small games are failing! Why?" in gamedev communities, but I don't think I have ever seen even a single "My dream game failed!" Especially when made by only 1 person.

This might be of interest though, on topic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/655zrg/results_survey_for_indie_developers_about_their/

 

First, I do, but I'm hardly about to call anyone's projects out in public as being "failures". Not a very polite thing to do, to say the least.

Secondly, "failed once released" is irrelevant. If a game is never released then, commercially speaking, it is necessarily a failure in commercial terms because it has no way of earning back anything invested into it. Even if you're into game dev for purely creative reasons that's not exactly great, as it's likely to impact the resources available for your next creation.

Third, again, see "Survivorship Bias". We're less likely to know about the circumstances behind "failed" games because they don't usually get a lot of attention.

 

I think you misread what I said, what I wrote was that most indie games fail, those that take long to develop by solo people are usually developed by people who have lots of experience in game development. That's not to say you will fail if you have no experience, but it's very risky nevertheless.

 

Hey Meltdown, nearly 8 years, wow. I will be looking forward to play your game.

 

Do you have any evidence that solo indie games that take a long time to develop are done only by or mostly by seasoned gamedevs?

I'd hypothesize it is far more accurate that the primary factor in that length is not experience, but casual commitment (part time work; not able to work on the game full time, and thus taking forever).That means that even by default, the person doesn't necessarily become experienced in those 10 years.

 

I think of the possibility of a solo game developer succeeding at pulling off a long and complex project in the same way as finding life on another planet.

OK first there are bajillions of other planets - er I mean game developers.

Out of the all these game developers, how many have the technical ability to pull off a complex game? Not all that many, but still a sizeable amount.

Out of the game developers remaining, how many have the ability to plan and execute a several year project in a reasonably efficient way? Not many at all.

Out of the game developers remaining, how many will not, in the course of the project, get hit by an asteroid - er I mean have the opportunity to get a comfortable job, get convinced by other people that it's probably not worthwhile, find a girlfriend/boyfriend, or lose their minds from too much coding? Virtually none, or rather, a statistically insignificant amount.

There you go, the chances of life on other planets is pretty slim.

 

Still No Evidence​

So the only examples you have are of games that were never released. I don't see these as failures as much as I see them as "Just Ideas", "Perpetual Alphas", or "Vaporware".

Like I said, just show me a single example of a dream project that took 5+ years, developed by only one person, that once released was a failure. Those don't exist. Otherwise people could show them. Meanwhile, I have plenty of evidence to back up my side.

We also have tons of evidence suggesting there are hundreds of 4+ year projects that will likely never be released. And although this isn't high quality evidence, it does give some indication that it is likely that if you don't finish your game in a year (or have real, tangible progress to show off) then you will never release your game. (Otherwise, we would see tons of indie games that took 5+ years to release. It is much more likely that those in this survey will never release.)

Don't you have to work on a game, to claim you worked on a game?​

To claim that a game is a failure when it is never released is just nonsense. I could claim to have made a game over the span of 20 decades, loosely tying together a few hours of game design & a few hours of programming some sprites to render, and claim "I have been developing 'Superhero SuperWars III: The SuperGame' for 20 years. It is now a failure, because I stopped working on it 2 minutes ago.

What annoys me is that sometimes developers actually do this. They actually claim their game has been in development for Development Time + Irrational additional time based on some vague idea 1-20 years prior. It is so disingenuous & dishonest in my eyes.

Meaningful Measurements​

I have always detested articles which claim some abstract or generic amount of time in years, rather than something actually worthwhile: an accurate measure in work years, work hours, or man-hours.

Saying "It took me X years" is not helpful to anyone. It is a meaningless, empty statement void of any value.
You have to include the context. Is that X years, part time? What is the average work day like? How many work days per week? Per year? Give some kind of estimate in man-hours or something tangible. Otherwise, why even bother speaking?

Vacations don't count.​

I guarantee you that the vast majority, if not all, of the games that have been in development for 5+ years (by indies; context is solo devs) are all part time developers with several months, if not years of development time completely absent. You could work on a game for year 1 while in college, get a job on year 2, go back to the project during your intermission between jobs or part time, and by year 8 you're still not done because your man hours still doesn't even equal the equivalent of a single developer working one full work year on a game. But guess what? You can write articles about how you've been working on a game for almost a decade, and it's still not released! #GameDevSoHard. I've seen this kind of boasting a bit too often, IMO. Mostly when early access devs need to make excuses against complaints about being in a perpetual alpha.

Real Evidence: Games take a few years, not decades.​

That is because even the biggest games don't take endless years to complete. Dwarf Fortress is a great example. It may not be officially released, but after just a few years it began to become a popular enough game because it was enough of a game to be played. Not just played, but played as if it had been released. A few years after that, and there were so many features it was equivalent to a game that wasn't just released, but saw enormous numbers of updates/expansions. Fast forward to today, and it's the equivalent of a decade old MMORPG that had consistent updates & expansions for its entire life. That is very different than games that are stuck in the vaporware category for 10 years before someone dabbles with some work using SDL. Stardew Valley is another great example. One guy, insane numbers of features & loads of content - all gorgeously drawn, animated, & audio-ed... In what? 4 years I think? And that includes a lot of part time work. At least a year or two where he worked part time at a movie theatre I believe.

Real life examples of what game developers can accomplish put a lot of this into perspective, and it's the only real evidence I see. The stuff Stardew Valley, Neo Scavenger, and even perpetual alphas like Project Zomboid have done? It shows that you do get a game when you work on the game.

More Evidence: Vaporware​

Those who have no game to show? Like all the superhero MMORPG's (4 years later, and City of Titans is still vaporware)? Their evidence & lackof game shows that you don't get a game when you don't work on the game. Even if you can claim "5 years in development" 4 years after a $0.6million kickstarter. They claim to have worked on the game the entire time, but when you have no screenshots, videos, or demos? When your game still looks like something you could make in Unity in a day or two? IMO that shows evidence of a scam / vaporware, not evidence of "A lot of work for 5 years, because games take forever to release!" Their latest update (the best evidence of progress)? They released some lore writing. If that doesn't scream "Vaporware", then I have a bridge to sell you. Meanwhile other games make enormous progress in just a few months or year, and that contradicts this idea that games take 5+ years to make. Even big ones. (I've seen more evidence for big projects being poorly managed & perpetually excused, than big projects actually being worked on. Even a big project, when worked on, will be able to show tangible progress in their devlog.)

Where's the Evidence? They never have any.
​

When I ask others to show me evidence of the contrary (games that take forever to make, and then fail in any regard), they rarely ever produce anything. The only evidence I've ever even been given are links to stuff that meets absolutely none of the criteria in the discussion. Most of the time the games are evidence to back up my assertions, not to contradict them. An argument about games made 5+ years, and everyone shuts up except the one guy who links something made in 5 months. A topic about solo devs, and some random user post links to a team of 5. I point out the evidence doesn't even fit the discussion, and the users just scuttle away in silence: Still insistent that they are right, but having no evidence to prove it.

I'm crazy to believe in Science.​

Since I based my worldview heavily on empirical evidence - what I actually see & can tangibly measure (as opposed to rumors I hear from gamedev communities), I find myself disagreeing a lot with a lot of people in gamedev circles.

I remember reading about how Super Meat Boy "took 2 months polishing the input". I laughed. Then I decided to ask for clarification. People hated me for asking for more details & blasted me for disbelief. Half hated me while stating that it took 2 months of full focus because it is just that important to the game. "They're just that good!" The other half blasted me for not understanding the obvious: It wasn't a full focus for 2 months. It was off-and-on for 2 months while they also did other stuff. "Duh! Why are you even asking?" They didn't address the fact people's views contradicted one another (hence my questions). The community's logic was inconsistent, their emotions high, and no one addressed my actual question: Was it 2 full months focus (and thus extremely inefficient, as it simply wouldn't take that long) or was it only a portion of those 2 full months (in which why mention it took you 2 months, when it clearly didn't? That is misleading at best, lying at worst.) Either way, it made them look bad, and since they had released a game already...who was I to ask them questions?

I believe in Estimates, not Exaggerations.​

That is why I keep track of man-hours. I can not only tell other people how long something will take me, but I can be much more efficient & accurate in determining (for myself) how long something will take. So far it has been very beneficial & given me a very accurate account for how long a game or feature will take. This is invaluable IMO, as it lets me plan accordingly.

This is the type of article I respect greatly:

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE AN INDIE GAME?​

I mean, just look at that graph! Droolz!




That is extremely useful data.

 

I very much doubt such projects don't exist, but I do agree you don't hear much about them. In fact, the other day Rami Ismail on Twitter mentioned this article, which covers exactly that point. Granted, its not specifically about 5+ year long projects, but still.
In any case, game done in x-years/months is really a read-between-the-lines-kind of question, if you ask me. And not even a very interesting one at that. Because what what value does the answer give you? Does it really matter if it took 6 months or a year to create x? The OP's other two questions should be given more time instead...

 

Yea, I heavily edited my above post to reflect this. It's a huge pet peeve of mine for people to mention their project in years, rather than in tangible man-hours.

I keep very detailed track of data for my game. Last time I checked, I started working on my game about 2 years ago. The number of man-hours I've put in? The equivalent of 4 full work months.

So I could say two things:

1. "It took me 2 years", which is misleading, disingenuous, and IMO a lie.
2. "It took me 4 full work months", which is helpful, truthful, and can give a more realistic showing of what is possible.
   Work Week = 40/hrs
   Work Month = 160/hrs

Talk about two vastly different results.
In Theory, the results of my advice could be wildly different, based on how I measure my dev time.

1. "You need sooo many years to make a game. You should plan for 6-8 years."
   Result: That is way too much work! Newbie may feel overwhelmed & discouraged. Time to just give up.
   
2. "You need to be able to work on your game full time, to achieve real progress."
   Result: Newbie realizes it's normal to not make much progress when you're only part time / hobbyist. Maybe they feel better already. Maybe they feel the need to quit their job after a successfully crowdfunding campaign.

 

To be honest with you, I'm actually having a very hard time finding successful games that took long being designed and developed solo, can you give me an example of any yourself that you're trying to follow as a model?

 

battleship in ansi C as a school project in a weekends time. ASCII art for the playfield

 

Sure

Solo?

Sherwood Forest (MMORPG)
Neo Scavenger
Stardew Valley
Thomas Was Alone
Axiom Verge
Dust
Braid
Minecraft
Cave Story
Retro City Rampage
Rollercoaster Tycoon
Tetris
Papers Please
Meridian New World
Love
Unturned
Banished
Lone Survivor

Too many to list, really. I need to stop here.

There's even more made by just 2 or 3.

As for time developed, there's just too many variables, but I suspect most fall between 1-4 years. Games that take longer than 4 don't seem to ever get released. I don't hear alot of releases that took 5+. A lot in that list are by seasoned gamedevs, but not all.

 

That's what I mean though, most of the names you listed were developed by people with significant experience before building such projects, and most took less than 4 years (I think most developed within 1-2 years). Chances of succeeding on a project that takes more than that for people who have never had any experience in the past and going solo is slim to non, that's not to say you should not do it though, if you believe in it, go for it. I'm just stating my 2 cents

 

There's this blogpost on Gamasutra (from just a few days ago) which you might find interesting to read, where the author of Pinstripe talks about his 5-year project.

 

The experience varies in that list.

Unturned was created by an 18 year old self-taught programmer.
Stardew Valley had a CS degree, graduating in 2011, but had no experience in gamedev. Game was released in 2016.

 

You can call it what you want, the label doesn't change the reality.

I recently heard the term "deferred success" bandied about as a sugar-coated way of describing something that hasn't met any meaningful goals or criteria for success, but which people really don't want to call a "failure". I think an unfinished video game that never gets released is a great example of a so-called "deferred success".

That's partly because your criteria are flawed, and partly for other reasons already raised. It's also irrelevant, though. If you want meaningful data about the reality of anything then looking for examples that fit some specific criteria is a poor approach. What you should be doing is taking a random sample, preferably a large and unbiased one, and looking at all of the data you can get about the games/developers within it.

And if you're looking for commercially successful games then your sample has to include games that never got finished or released.

Also, looking at the success of individual games is misleading. Someone might make a bunch of stuff that doesn't succeed before finally hitting on something that gets big. If you're making 5 year games that's going to take a heck of a lot longer than if you're making 1 year games, or 6 month games, or 12 week games. (And when you strike gold your older games might also start to sell, which could well result in a genuine, non-ironic "deferred success".)

 

I’m about to finish my first game. It’s my very first game. Hardest part? Getting the assets. It’s a very simple game and I plan to make one more improvement and fix another bug before I release. It obviously will still need a lot more polishing, but that will be good for a first release. Will not monetize until first update, actually. I started in September, so it took about six months. I was only working on it for four though, I took a two month break.

 

I got some simple demo prototypes running in just a few days, but it took 2 years to make something that I actually released to the public. I tried to do an open world GTA style game demo (Just a demo not a full game). I was determined to keep the scope really small. Just one small closed off street scene and a simple combat system.

I didn't understand just how tempting it would be to increase the scope. It would be like a drug, and I would become a scope increasing addict. Sure enough I kept increasing the scope, and adding new features, making new art requirements. If increasing the scope was my drug, then I did something sort of like Al Pacino with the coke mountain in the movie scarface. And somehow I went from one tiny scene to trying to make Grand theft auto.

After 2 years, I had a big open world game that was a sprawling lopsided mess with a bad combat system, bad physics, bad gameplay, horrible cutscenes, almost no sound, no objective, no victory condition, no achievements, no promo art, no splashscreen, no marketing done. But there was enough to show.

I thought the demo was kind of fun to play, but probably not even worth the time it took to install and download, and defnitely not worth any money. But I had enough of a slice of it to show what it was and hear feedback from people if anyone would actually pay for it if I finished developing it. Everyone that I knew and the others on the project told me to wait and keep working on it for more time, but I took the advice of Reid Hoffman who said:

"If You're Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late"

I put out my demo and surprise surprise everybody hated it. I got thousands of bad comments, videos on youtube of people making fun of it. It wasn't just that they said you could improve this or that. Everyone really hated it. It was painful. Really painful. I heard your first game would probably suck but I wasn't really prepared for how bad it bombed and how much it hurt.

But I still think Reid Hoffman's advice was right. Getting it out the door was the right thing to do. It was good to just get some real feedback. And if I didn't do that I might have spent a few more years pointlessly developing more features that nobody cared about. The experience made me stronger for the next projects which went much better.


(Maybe I should start a Scope Increaser's Anonymous group)

 

Hey, you created a some fun for a few people for some amount of time.

Great post -- no sarcasm.

One thing to keep in mind: Probably most of the people who solo build games don't do so within their first year of getting into game development. Many come from programming backgrounds, then spend a few years learning before they start working on their game. So even if they made it in "six months", that's going to give the total beginner asking the question a wrong impression.

 

I don't know. Launching early and being embarrassed by it means you're going to get bad reviews from the press. And even if you do a great job afterwards, it's kind of hard to recover from that.

So I don't know. I dislike platitudes and mantras like that. They are not exactly false, but they are not right either. I mean. As in everything, it depends. Maybe it's right for you, maybe it's not.

I mean it obviously worked for you, so, great!

I guess I'm kinda irked by the usage of the bold font and larger text, which kind of implies this is important and should be taken to heart by everyone.

 

There is no way to recover from a bad release . So think twice of not releasing a properly tested game if you've beeen working on it like 1-2 years cause you can blow all that work not for working some extra 3-4 months

 

Change name? Try again?

 

Not from dev standpoint but product. Your indie release has a super short time window on steam where it must perform good or die forever. You may if you add a super mega update have a chance to reduce afterwards the hit of the release but it will never be the same. The game, by the time you release must be super polished or face reality. I would say its better to fall short on content than from gameplay. You can add maps or stuff later on but if your game has annoying bugs ppl will flood your game forum with issues and newcomers will perceive your game as a buggy crap. (I learnt this lesson the hard way)

 

Virtual RC Racing: 4 years from start to release
VRC Pro: 6 years from start to release

These took so long mainly because we wrote the engines ourselves from scratch.

Design it, Drive it : Speedboats (first Unity game): 15 months to first release, then kept updating for another year and a half. This was a solo project for the most part except for a couple of donated engine 3D models.

Three weeks is nothing. In total I spent 14 years on the first two projects including the post-release periods where we kept updating things forever. The main lesson I've learned over the last 17+ years of doing this is that marketing matters more than anything. Sad, but true.

 

By "embarrassed" they don't mean that randos criticize your game. They mean that you personally are "embarrassed" because you haven't spent hours upon hours polishing everything.

That aside, I'm not sure I agree (with their statement) that you should put something out "half-baked." That may be beneficial for your own experience, but I don't think it is for the people having to sift through that many more mediocre games which are an "experiment" and little more.

 

Either interpretation leads to bad reviews and a bad launch though.

 

There's places for half-baked games and they're game jams and the prototyping phase. If you release a half-baked game outside of those situations you're kinda doing yourself a disservice.

 

So by "release" it seems like people are talking about commercial sale, then? Because who cares about a "bad launch" otherwise?

I wouldn't worry about making money from your games until you can consistently make stuff that, at least, is able to deliver on player expectations. Until you can do that I think commercialisation is a distraction. (See: my oft used metaphor of a person trying to sell CDs while taking starter guitar lessons )

Loaded, biased question for the sake of discussion: Do we really all think that first time developers should be aiming for commercial release?

In the thread's context of first games I do agree that you should get stuff out there early and often. Embarrasing? Well, with a bit of experience you won't see it that way if you treat projects as learning experiences. Some will work out, others won't, and new projects get the benefit of experience from prior projects.

Your current game is not your identity. They're just things you make. Getting multiple projects under your belt is an important part of building that perspective. And giving yourself permission to call things "finished" before you can call them "perfect" is an important part of getting there .

 

It's going on near 20 years now.

 

around 3 weeks for a pong clone with nicer graphics and full menu with sound, music and different playfields.
it was a really nice experience while learning c#

 

Started with a basic console flight game and took a year semi full time to rewrite it from the ground up while studying flight physics and incorporating various aerodynamic forces. Now I have a very nice flight game somewhere between a console game and a flight sim that puts those from the asset store to shame. Now tidying up and perfecting the finer code details but still have the final artwork and game rules to finish. Oh, and the guy who first inspired me to do it died. RIP Conrad.

 

When I write a 'game', I write an engine that can be many games. It takes extra conceptual coding but I couldn't justify the effort otherwise.

 

I see a lot of people disagree with the advice of Reid Hoffman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_Hoffman
I think what he was saying at is fail fast, learn from it, iterate and improve. But his words are very open to interperetion, and should not be an excuse for releasing garbage.

Still, It was the right advice for me at the time. If I didn't do that, I would still be working on it. And I think the game still would have been a failure even if I had polished it. It was the wrong project for us. The game never recovered, but I did.

To me I understand that advice as....

1. Make the most important core feature
2. Polish the heck out of that one feature
3. Don't scope creep keep polishing
4. Release it as a demo and be embarassed because there is only one feature
See what people think,
use that data to decide if the project is worth investing the time into.

I guess there is risk in doing that, but there is also risk in spending 5 years on a project, only to see it fail and learn the same lessons that could have been learned in 3 or 6 months.

Yes, I agree and understand what you are saying. If a major studio put out a piece of junk it would hurt their reputation. But as unknown developer doing a first game. I felt the risk of getting stuck for 5 years on the wrong project was a bigger risk than releasing a demo and learning that finishing it was a bad idea.

Yes, but this one needed 3 more years, it wasn't worth the risk.

Yes you are right and I did get bad press. This was the right advice for me at the time. It is probably not the right advice for an established studio. But it is probably good advice for someone trying to complete their first project and move on to the second. About the big text, I copied and pasted it from another site, and it formatted that way automatically.

Yes everything you are saying makes sense. But how do you get the validation that you are on the right track without releasing a demo. I want that validation so I don't spend years building features and maps in a game that nobody wants to play.

 

Don't even worry about polish. Just like you don't want to build maps and features for a game nobody wants to play, there's also no point polishing a thing nobody cares about.

Build the smallest thing you can to test whether people are interested in the product. Sometimes that might not even be a playable thing.

 

I still disagree, but okay.

Yeah, no worries, I kinda figured. (although, in fairness, you could have changed it ). It's just that my dislike for generalities kicked in a bit

If they understand what that means, why not?

 

I'm not saying don't release it at all. I was mainly referring to a commercial release there. And I should have said this but I was thinking about Steam in particular.

By all means release stuff on itch or GameJolt or Kongregate. These platforms seem to be designed around small experimental work.

Kind of like the difference between putting music on SoundCloud and releasing an album.

 

I looked at your website and your Lost Echo trailer the whole thing looked really good. It made me question if I should have more patience. So had a few questions for you about Lost Echo.

Is it something like a visual novel but with 3d animation?
How long is the game playing time?
Was that your first game?
How long did it take to develop?

 

i´m developing a game, and i will delivery it with one 1 year , but i´m doing with my group in college.

 

Thanks But, again, that is something that worked for me, I am not trying to say that it's the only way to do things. So if another approach works for you, go for it.

It's closer to a point and click adventure actually (you control a character and move them around and there are puzzles). It's like a visual novels only in terms of how we present text and that there's a lot of it

4-5 hours I think. I can speed run it in a hour. And I've heard from people that it took them up to 8-9 in some cases (I guess they took their time and/or got stuck?)

Yes.

2-3 years.