Yesterday I failed to deliver on a game project that I have been working on since... February of this year. I had this idea for a really cool game project that was going to be super fun and unique. I had the premise set up and everything. It was going to be a Megaman Style platform shooter game that used various elements like fire, wind, and air with 9 levels, all with unique bosses.
So what happened that caused me to cancel the project? Well... Let me get into the technical aspects of why first.
Pixel art... is not cheap. I spent over $400 on only the first quarter of the game alone, and that is not the kind of money I have right now, especially with this pandemic. It was probably going to cost me over $1500 by itself just for game assets. That doesn't include the marketing that I was going to do, and it was definitely not going to be easy to get a green light on Steam. The next one was marketing. I didn't even bother showing it off at a Game Jam, big Youtube channel or hell, even my peers sometimes. It was a technical and commercial failure the longer I worked on it.
The other reason, which is personal, is that... I really didn't enjoy making it. I hated using Unity for 2D back then for my other game project and I still hated it during the development of my game which lead to me being frustrated really quickly and not working to work on it after 2 hours. I also really found development slow from switching to the IDE and Unity Editor. The 2D physics are not all that well polished either since it's inheriting from the 3D ragdoll physics engine and trying to tweak that to get a good feel is something I would spend a good couple of nights on trying to do. But honestly... I really didn't find it enjoyable for the most part. It also wasn't received well by gamedev and other gaming groups outside my personal circle of friends and co-workers. Now I could blame Unity for this after all the frustration but honestly... it would just be more fair to say that the engine just isn't for me. And that... I didn't like the tools given to me to do the job.
So... I had 2 options;
Either push myself to continue to make the game and not be satisfied with the end result... or relieve myself of frustration and work on something I know I can deliver on and actually care about.
So... I chose the latter. Now everybody feels disappointment. It's natural for everyone. I'm REALLY feeling this first failure. Especially after all the time I spent on it and... it not going into fruition... it really cuts deep. But... with failure comes after redemption. I learned a lot coming out of this, and that's:
- Budget accordingly and efficiently
- Market Games Better
- Be prone to frustration when developing
- Don't drag on some thing you feel deep in your gut is going to fail.
- Don't continue when you're not having fun
So... was it a complete waste? Financially yes, but lesson wise no. I grew a lot from this failed experience and I'll make sure to better about the mistakes and assure they won't happen again.
But in the mean time, I'm going to proofread another game concept. This time for sure I know I'll have something good to show for it.
Thanks for tuning into my blog and have a great day!
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