On the occasion of the new year has also been coming, I thought I should take the time to review the entire Hogvalord development process after two years. I started this project from an initial naive idea of a simple mini-game with a content scope that was supposed to be completed by a one-person army in six months, but the incurred content has turned a small project into a mid-range project. The implementation time also extended from six months to one year and was completed after two years.
DIFFICULTY AND CHALLENGES
The root of this extension comes from a lack of experience in the determination time it takes to complete a game with story progression. It is the first time I've finished a game with a story from start to finish. The game story may be simple, but it also creates enough challenges for combining the story and features in the game.
In addition, with the initial orientation of making the game without rushing, I determined this project would be my full-time job. I don't want to be burn-out as other game developers who worked so hard without eating and resting. So, I chose the loose schedule for myself.
One of the other things that makes the project last is leveraging many different resources on the internet and asset store for saving budget. Finding free and paid resources and then putting them all together is a hard job for an indie game developer. It requires quite a bit of skill. But everything has a price because the resources you selected to create the game come from many different sources, so you can't be proactive in defining your art style for the game. However, it compensates for the tight budget of an indie game developer.
Because the budget is not large enough, the human resources to join the project are also limited. The whole team has me, and an artist helped me with visual elements in the project. She also gave feedback on the game features and polished the game's story.
The playtesting also costs a lot of time. This task took more time than other jobs because the game content spanned over four hours. Each time we had to test the game, that was like torturing ourselves. Many people think playtesting is a fun and simple task. But it does not like that. When you're a solo game developer, you've got to do all the work yourself, and you have to replay a piece of content that's more than four hours long for every bug check. You'll understand the feeling.
Besides, I aimed to create the game content in English, so the translation is also a big challenge for me. But I have to overcome this difficulty to keep up with the international developers. Fortunately, I had help from a US friend, so the language in the story dialogue was less confusing to the player. Maybe after this project, I will stay away from developing games with too much text.
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS HARD ROAD?
Why did I choose to make an offline Steam game instead of mobile games as other people? The reason comes from my perception and personal preference. I like playing console and PC games more than mobile games. In addition, free-to-play games are not my favorite type of games I want to play.
Besides, mobile game developers cram the freemium game with too many ads that disrupt the player's experience of the game content. I'm not a big fan of microtransactions. So, I wouldn't make that kind of game. In addition, I am obsessed with a message that I want to convey through this game Hogvalord. Although I do not know if it is attractive enough and touches the hearts of many people as expected, that desire kept pushing me to create a story for this game without expecting that all games with storylines are hard to develop with the limited resources of an individual.
WHAT WENT RIGHT
As a humble game developer, I rarely talk about my work on the blog because I feel there is a lot to learn. There are many skills that I'm still lacking and need to enhance more to have enough ability for creating better games title.
Although Hogvalord is the first long-term project in my life, I'm pretty proud to have fulfilled my commitment to finish this product. This project was the first product with many flaws. But what I learn via this project will help me make better next games.
I learned a lot during the two years of working on the project. From someone who didn't know anything about business or marketing, I built up my business knowledge and marketing day by day when I worked on the Hogvalord project. My simple approach is reading many books about business and startups in my free time.
My two years of constant efforts to build content for games and content for the web to showcase my products on various social media platforms also left many valuable lessons in marketing. There is a lot of knowledge that I have read before, but because I have never experienced it in practice, it is still vague, but through the implementation of this Hogvalord project, that knowledge comes to life.
Hogvalord is not only a project game, but it also teaches me about engineering, game design and pushes me to overcome my limitations. I gained so many things after completing this project.
CONCLUSION
What I have written here does not yet fully represent the experience I spent through. But for now, I am relieved when Hogvalord has finally done. After looking back on everything, I think my next game should have more straightforward content instead of a complicated storyline game. I will try to avoid cramming many genres into one game.
I'd probably pick a specific game genre and try my best to present what it stands for instead of creatively experimenting with a mix of everything that wouldn't promote the keys of the genre that I want to make.
There are many roads that once you have gone too far, there is no way to turn back, so no matter how bad it is, you should finish that journey and find another new path. Success often comes from luck, never the result of a mere effort. The important thing is I still feel happy and satisfied on the creative road. And I think that's okay.