Is Your Game Too Ambitious? Mine Were And This Is How I Fixed It.

[@SoulEngineDev]

How many of your games were never finished, and what did you learn from it? I wanna hear all about it!

[@sinkingdutchman7227]

I finished all of my last 6 games. They were all on mobile and super-focused. Current one is on PC and has massive feature creep (Hey, why shouldn't you be able to take a bath?) 😂 And that's mostly because I had the luxury to to work on it fulltime for quite a while. Bottom line: don't do it full time even if for some reason you have the opportunity, unless you have a really *good* plan.

[@ultimateownsz]

I think for some games you can choose to go opensource with it. If you are really passionated about it, and want to make it open to anyone you can and you might get contributions from others

[@ZainAhmad-jl4vt]

when I first started making games I wanted to create a huge open world RPG, now with years of experience I'm really excited to work on a sidescrolling platformer.

[@SoulEngineDev]

I felt the SAME way. I had made a bunch of really small games, but I was always really excited to build a platformer for some reason. Must be because I grew up on them. Thanks for being here!

[@georgeml-o_o]

I think the greatest poison to a project, is the expectation (yes, it is buddhism), you create something in your mind that sounds great, unbelievable fun or smart, but our imagination play tricks on us, it lacks the capabilitie of imagining the difficulties or even seeing if it's fun at all, but it makes you think, for your own pride, that you have something unique. And I think that a project, or a game design, or any management tool that you use in your process can indeed help, but I don't think this is the root cause of any failure, you can only fail if you expect success. We need to enjoy the ride and not yearn for something that's probably incredible only in our heads. Create, learn and make yourself better, the end of the road is an illusion! And you're right, is the small steps, the small progress each day, the moves us further.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Seriously could have not said it better. I love the ‘you can only fail if you expect success’ and really just enjoying the journey. Thank you for being here!

[@tyronx1]

> How many games have you started but not finished? One. Still working on it 8 years later :D Also its my job now.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Dude, this is awesome! You’re living the dream.

[@claude-alexandretrudeau1830]

A project I had with a friend about 20 years ago was an RPG on RPG Maker about a noble recruiting craftsmen for his workshop. I had this cool idea of implementing a system where how you defeat enemies determines what loot you got from them. Like, if you killed a slime with an ice attack, you could retrieve its caustic slime. Conversely, if you dislodged its core gem with a spear, you didn't get the caustic slime, but retrieved an enchanted gem with fixating properties, useful in the creation of magic staves. At the time, I had no programming skills whatsoever. I was good at writing, and that was it. I wrote a scenario that made both my partner and I feel overwhelmed, because, in a few lines of narration were a lot of systems we had no idea how to create. I had great enthusisasm, but it motivated me to write more, which added more features. You can of course guess that this project went nowhere. I did write a novel since then, though.

[@SoulEngineDev]

This is relatable. But a novel!? So cool. Keep up the good work.

[@wasteland_games]

As a hobbyist game developer working on my first serious, long-term project, you can't imagine how glad I am to having found your channel. Thank you!

[@SoulEngineDev]

Wow, this is awesome to hear. I hope you’re feeling encouraged as you work on your project. It’s not easy but hearing how others are doing always helps me too. Thanks for being here!

[@InFrontofOne]

Just wanna say, I have really enjoyed your channel. Your attitude and directness about your own challenges have helped me feel less crazy doing this. Thanks man

[@SoulEngineDev]

This is so encouraging to hear. Thank you! Really glad you’re here!

[@RealCoachMustafa]

I was working on a game for a while, about 2 years or so. I even got a steam page for it. The thing is, it's a 2d platformer. I took Thomas Brush's course so I was thinking I can get a publisher to fund me. I contacted every published in Alan's list and got declined by everyone. In addition, it was taking me forever to make the game. Making one level took a long time to make, and one level would be about 5 mins, no more than 10 minutes of gameplay to get through. I realized that the amount of time it takes to make a platformer is forever. I ditched the game and the steam page is still up, being lonely.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Thanks for sharing your journey. It’s wild out there. Are you working on another game now?

[@RealCoachMustafa]

@@SoulEngineDev I released Nexus Defenders on Steam back in February, which is a Tower Defense game. Now I'm working on a tactics game. I realized making one map for these strategy games is less time consuming than an action game like a platformer, and the player can easily spend more time within that same map, in comparison to action or adventure oriented games.

[@HE360]

WOW, those look like a lot of great game ideas that you had. Hopefully you'll be able to resurrect some of those games that are in the graveyard, and complete those.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Thank you! I hope so too.

[@kubzcz3284]

I am sorry, but this sounds like a response that Chat GPT would write 😂.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Cool to know that I sound like Chat GPT I guess? lol

[@MikAlexander]

I did about 30 prototypes. Some where technical, some were games I've began. Some where fun and some not. But this experience allows me to understand, that making a game CAN NOT stick completely to the design doc, but contrary to your take, the design has to be flexible: you add content - you revaluate - you cut content - you move forward. I also found that preparing most important features upfront isn't always the best way. Sometimes an important feature, but one that doesn't really does anything by itself, is better to do early, just so you have an idea of how it will get implemented later or how it can be used algorithmically for some other parts, becoming a replacement for a usual, generic stuff. And finally, mindset I have is to just do and don't stress.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Great advice. I feel like everyone learns differently and sharing helps us to see what someone else is learning from their journey. Thanks for sharing!

[@MikAlexander]

@@SoulEngineDev Thing is, I was there where you are now. I'll give you a definite advice I've once got from a movie producer regarding script writing: take best ideas from each of your story ideas and make one movie out of that. Applies to games too. ;)

[@DarkBloodbane]

I have two games which I never finish. Both are metroidvania. The first one is because constructing one room was tough and cumbersome and I never liked the base mechanics. The second one was actually improvement from the first one, I brought many things I learned to the former. Why it failed? simply because of overscoping and I never had any definite plan for the game. Still, these two failures have taught valuable lessons to me and I brought many stuffs from them to create my next metroidvanias.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Its all about learning, and we learn when we share our experiences with each other. Thank you!

[@MThingz]

Great content. I'm a hobbyist myself at making games, and I have a bunch of prototypes just sitting in my graveyard waiting to be finished. Staying focus on one game within its initial core scope is very difficult for a solo dev

[@SoulEngineDev]

Thank you! And you got this, keep it up!

[@dustinstump4475]

Great advice man. Appreciate you taking the time to spread knowledge.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Thank you! Glad you’re here.

[@ZukaraTheGame]

Soooo many of my games have never made it to the light of day. Luckily I am getting better at just finishing what I start. Im almost done with Pteranodon 2:Primal Island. I have to fight the urge for scope creep and so far so good. The game will be what it will be!

[@SoulEngineDev]

Yes! Keep it up. Thanks for sharing.

[@thatfancyguy869]

Haven't had any games in a graveyard yet, since I'm still new to game dev, and only have two games that I've worked/am working on, but I've gone into game dev because my friends and I usually have those little bouts of "What do you wanna play" "I don't know" for a few hours. And since that's still a recurring theme in my friend group I've been hammering on my big game in my free time. It does have feature creep and all that but the game itself is still in its "I don't know where I'm going with this but the foundation is there" stage. The main thing that's been a bit of an inspiration in regards to timeframe is, Team Fortress 2, one game I love to play, has taken 9 years to finish, and after working on mine for a few months and making decent headway I'd be tickled to death to have it as polished in 9 years. But If not, I'll keep working on bits of it, polish 'em up, and move to the next one. I forgot the saying but It's something along the lines of "How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time." I may take breaks, and work on other things, but I'll always chip away at that one game. I started game dev almost exclusively to get that one game out and play it with my friends lol. And other games I work on are pretty much just dev practice. I'll get it done eventually, might take forever, but it'll get there for sure. (The other ones though I wouldn't know, they'd probably get dropped shortly after I learned what I needed to implement into the other one lol)

[@SoulEngineDev]

Dude, the journey is real. Thank you for sharing! It’s always encouraging to hear from other people about their journeys.

[@caffeinated-studios]

I have countless games in my graveyard, but each one has improved my skills in different ways. I think my main problem is whenever I encounter a difficult hurdle in my current project, I start thinking of new game ideas. Then those ideas start expanding and before I know it I'm jumping ship. However this time I'm determined to release my current game. It's got a steam page and a few wishlists so that has been good motivation to finish it. The issue I'm having now is I discovered a much better way to architect projects only after I built a majority of the systems.

[@SoulEngineDev]

That’s exciting! We’re always learning new things as we try new things. Would love to see your game if you want to drop the page link!

[@xwety]

Complete dev noob here. I've got big ambitions for one main game, basically put; an open world modern kung fu multiplayer (with sooooo much more to it). I haven't even begun development, but rather, I've been focused on creating a "biblical" game design document, prior to doing anything else, and making sure I can handle the type of coding needed (making with UE5 as I continue to learn C++). I'm about 30 pages into the planning stage, so far. I also have ideas for smaller, simpler games to work at on the side when I get burned out. Although I don't have any experience, I would disagree with you, as far as scrapping ideas or pushing them to the back burner, if they have any potential but become too overwhelming. I constantly go back into the design document and expand on or omit potential functions/plot, etc., and the game concept has changed several times since inception. I feel that this process is what will make any game great: refinement. I find that a lot of games lack in the common sense department. For example, games where you need to be stealthy, but when you eliminate enemies, and other enemies can see the bodies, but you can't move the bodies (like in the Cayo Perico heist in GTA 5), that just makes the game unenjoyable, and are things that MUST be taken into consideration when designing any game. And, in that process, you should start planning accordingly, or scrapping that element/function altogether, if it cannot be done correctly. Fine-tuning the small stuff has such a big effect in a finished product, from a gamer's perspective.

[@SoulEngineDev]

This is all great stuff. As you keep learning and experiencing new ways to build games, you also learn more about your style and yourself. Thanks for sharing! Can’t wait to see what you create in the future.

[@feilichen1173]

Humm I do be crazy ambitious, but I finished most of the games I set to finish, last one (Namely Neon Tail) had huge ambitions, still made it to Steam. It's an open world roller skating action RPG with Alien invasion and Super Power fights using Tricks and Combos. I do however have many prototypes, but they were never meant to become finished games. While I think we're agreeing on issues and fixes, I would not attribute a graveyard to having too much ambitions. I'd attribute that to not setting myself in a situation where I can handle my ambitions. I left my 3D artist work with my saved money to give myself a full year to learn coding. My first full solo project Sela the Space Pirate was me learning to code. There's like one week worth of art work and animations, everything else was learning to code by doing it. Now for an artist to learn code with nothing but Google (No AI back in the days, it was like 2012) That's ambitious enough to not have to care about anything else for this project. Neon Tail on the other hand was me going wild. The project is finished but cost me all my money, quite the financial disaster, but I gave my best shot. Back to 9 to 5. Was worth a try. Good luck on your adventures.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Thanks for sharing your journey and thoughts. The situation you put yourself in to fuel your ambitions is definitely important!

[@azrhyga]

Great video talking about your dead projects and what made them die In my case for luck I don't have any project dead as only I'm working on one, but I had to refactor it as it's my first project and I'm learning a lot during the time than I'm working on it, now I'm working on another refactor than hopefully will be the last than I have to do

[@SoulEngineDev]

That’s awesome! I’ve been there too. Good luck on your project, keep at it.

[@azrhyga]

@@SoulEngineDev Thanks very much!! It is really appreciated!!

[@mischiefmotorsgame]

I try to limit my graveyard. Basically when I have new ideas, I write a simple one-liner on a post-it and put it on my wall of ideas. That way I'll just mentally leave it there and won't forget about it but I wont let it distract me too much either. Also, the way I plan out my deadline is mostly objectives based. I set myself up a long term (3 months) that I split into core mechanics (amongst other nice to haves) written out on a kanban board and every week, I try to decide "what can I accomplish this week". In its simplest forms, always. Then you can test it out, iterate or scrap it early enough to not feel bad to cut something. It hasnt been perfect because life with 2 youngs kids, but it helped a lot.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Love this. Thinking by what you can accomplish by the week is a great idea. And I can definitely relate to life with kids! Glad you’re here.

[@mischiefmotorsgame]

@@SoulEngineDev yeah it encourages thinking small. And you can easily anticipate what you schedule can and cannot be. I'm an Agile Coach in my real job so Im used to making people cut down things into smaller bits of deliverables.

[@anonymous49125]

The one project that kills me that I had to bury is: a flash based mmorpg that played like diablo 2 and had that pre-rendered graphics style. Shockingly, wasn't scope, skill, nor project management issue (download size was crazy for flash - like 3 gigs worth of 2d prerendered graphics, but you would stream+cache what you needed as you play and when you needed them, so that was fine.). It was apparent that flash was slow, but when the project was just about done, the performance was just unshippable - the graphics in flash is run 100% on a single core cpu. This hurt so bad, but, we held out hope as flash around that time was stringing developers along with hardware acceleration bring right around the corner, so we put all our hopes and dreams on 'molehill' - when that released, it was a full re-do to integrate into that (the api pretty much was a 'write your own 3d engine, good luck'), but by that time the writing was on the wall that flash was going to eat the dirt. Molehill technically was hardware accelerated (gpu) but the performance gained from that wasn't as much as one would hope, and definitely not worth converting everything over. RIP flash and that mmo... Other projects that are DOA for me are ones where the team doesn't want to plan and stick to plans - every 10 seconds "oh, we should actually X" which as the programmer, pretty much means 1) overengineering everything to account for whatever random as changes that people want, 2) completely rewrite everything over, and over, and over again and try to smush new ideas into an existing codebase. I've had the most success by: prototypings concepts as stand alone experiences (with minimal art resources, each starting over with a blank slate), testing what people want to see conceptually (no more than a weeks worth of work at a time), then choosing "we want X, Y, and Z" and then PLANNNING and building just that, and building that from scratch. Increases not only chance of success, but is vastly quicker than just winging it and fighting against technical debt of half baked and half implemented ideas.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Wow, thanks for sharing that journey. I hope you’re encouraged to keep at it even though it can be exhausting.

[@MrKlimcio]

If it wasn't for the voice I almost thought Chris O'Dowd picked up gamedev...

[@SoulEngineDev]

Haha I’ve never heard this! But I see it.

[@blackcitadelstudios]

My game is too ambitious... 😅

[@taskersama3433]

Your game is awesome bro! Don't stop making it. Wishlisted! 👍

[@blackcitadelstudios]

​@@taskersama3433thanks bro! 😊👍 We will be doing a combat demo soon. Hope to see you on discord. 👋

[@taskersama3433]

@@blackcitadelstudios yeah, i'm already in your discord and already applied as a playtester. Looking forward to playing the demo. 👍

[@mathislalonde353]

Hi ! I have a few question, I'm new to programming, like really new, I'm looking at how to make a game with Godot on KZbin. But it is difficult. I don't know how to learn properly. So I’m interested in how you learn ! Like should I take note or going back when I have forget how to do somethings watch video ? Ho and thanks for the advices, I'm sure when I try to create my own game it will come in handy!

[@SoulEngineDev]

I’m sure many others can speak into this better than myself, but I know Heart Beast is a fantastic KZbinr who does Godot tutorials, and there are many great discord servers you can join to ask others for help such as the BlackThorn Prod, and Brackeys servers. I would go to those place first probably, but if anyone has any other ideas, we’d love to hear them!

[@mathislalonde353]

@@SoulEngineDev thx a lot !

[@8149ramziramzi1]

why didnt you just prototype them...make a pitch deck then try to get it funded...thats how the big companies do it ..

[@SoulEngineDev]

This is a great idea haha now that I think of it, almost three of them were almost at the prototype phase, and just needed a little more work… thank you for the insight!

[@8149ramziramzi1]

@@SoulEngineDev You just need one level...... just make sure your pitch deck is great... and artwork is on point. and with your pitch deck, add a NDA file.. they will sign it and it make it look more professional. Good Luck my guy...

[@reversamente]

not really... I've finished all the projects I've started.

[@SoulEngineDev]

Dude, that’s amazing! Keep it up! What do you think helps your complete games, where others maybe don’t?

[@raysandrarexxia941]

I feel like I'll never make anything. I keep giving up right at the start

[@SoulEngineDev]

Don’t give up! Everything with dev is hard and every journey is different. You have to keep going and push through the feeling of not being able to do it.

[@rfcn722]

bro i have like 6 unfinished games on godot and 4 on unity ☠☠didnt upload a single one on the internet which is really sad

[@SoulEngineDev]

This is totallly relatable 😅

[@rootbindev]

Hello I am a game developer

[@SoulEngineDev]

Hey, nice! You’re in the right spot, haha.