One Man Army

I've been working all by myself: I do my own graphics, make levels, create logic, create idea & concepts, search for music/sounds. Since I'm alone, I take a lot of time for making games. for example: Stupid Chickens 1 took me around 4-6 hours/ day for around 2-3 weeks and yet it too simple: ( around 30 levels & very easy puzzle levels that could be finished in around 1-2 hours only, excluding the bug/glitch that I haven't even fixed because I don't know how). I get around 10 negative rating for 1-2 positive one, and it is hard to do this alone. My main question is: can someone develop a successful medium-sized game alone?

Notch did.

Jonathan Blow did (even though most assets were then outsourced).

Konjak does.

Most indies around do.

And 6 hours of work a day. That sounds cool, lucky you

Most pros do at least the double of that and for months.

Just read the post mortems on gamasutra, you might get a better idea.

Naji : Although quite a few persons do, I'd still recommend to focus on a few key skills and to find somebody to take care of the rest. If you want to make a living out of it otherwise, it might cost you a lot of time, and some tedious work actually! I've been working with an engineer, for whom a lot of algorithms are really easy to manage. He knows of a lot of advanced powerful programming concepts I just can't use properly, and he's just fast at what he does.

In your examples, Kyatric , Notch and Blow are both primarily technical guys, developers, while Konjak is clearly an artist for example. They all use their key strength to their advantage: as a constraint that limits your choices, thus facilitates your progression during development.

Valerien: I'd dare to say that what they mostly have in common is a close attention to the design of gameplay mechanics.

And for that, it doesn't really matter whether you are technical or artistic savy.

Kyatric : that's true, they're all designers at heart! And one can make commercial games regardless of either his artistic or development skills; you just get limited as to what you can achieve.

Doing everything alone is quite frustrating. Though I think I can handle most of the technical part, for my next project I will try to find a dedicated programmer so I can focus on art and story, and we can maybe design the levels/mechanics together. It's not about the time, really, but the workflow. I'm more efficient when I can concentrate on one aspect (and don't have to search through mountains of tutorials just to add a new spell).

"Being indie is easy" - said no one ever

Being accountable for a whole project and making sure its thoroughly complete can be overwhelming but doing so says a lot about your character. Not everyone is built to be indie .

"Being indie is easy" - said no one ever

Being accountable for a whole project and making sure its thoroughly complete can be overwhelming but doing so says a lot about your character. Not everyone is built to be indie .

i have to say being indie is easy just look at all the Flappy bird clones out there its more "Making something of quality is not easy and only those who really put work in will succeed except for the couple of flappy birds that randomly make it " -said most successful indies

You're right volkiller730 there are successful "Flappy Bird" clones like "Splashy Fish" . Theres people that have become successful off of Gamesalad templates .. http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/19/how-on ... -template/ ..

Staying indie is the challenge

After teaching C2 Techniques and how games work, with various samples, I observed a whole student class change from singular visitors to real developers.

Become an one man army is a matter of how you do things, and becoming organized, paying attention to details, etc, you can make almost anything, even with trial & error.

My next game will be an adventure, and the second in the line will be another adventure, with some unique techniques, the third will be an action adventure. Actually I'm learning how to draw manga and HQs (Comics) to draw it.

The course of HQ and Manga are running in parallel with my Dr. Degree in Civil Engineer (Calculist), so, you can see how the time is a matter of desire and not only opportunity.

If you lack skills in art, find someone to fill this hole or start learning / improving it, otherwise you'll waste your time, instead of making something good with your precious time.

If you find a good Team, you'll also find good friends:-)

To me there is nothing better to keep me encouraged than progressing with nice people talking heaps of rubbish

Right now im working solo in my free time, using various open source assets found online and providing the credit for them as necessary. Im happy making my little tutorials and basic games right now.

However, once I've increased my understanding of C2 I would probably look to join a team. Its all about what works for you.

I guess I will stay solo forever, unless an opportunity knocked my door, one day!

I'm also solo.

But I made my games using my own graphics and musics. I'm also use the musics from other sources such as OpenGameArt and Incompetech.

Examples of the games I made with other's musics:

• Round Rotate (broken game, now hosted on GitHub) - Pinball Spring at Incompetech.com
• Aircrafter 2030 (my entry for the Construct 2030 jam) - Xeon Theme Remastered at OpenGameArt.org