Let's Get Real: Facing Game Dev Realities with Brutal Honesty

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In this video, we give a brutally honest update to our game dev progress with an all access pass to our behind the scenes struggles.
We confront the reality of game development, sharing the highs and lows of creating Samurado.
Originally a 90-day challenge, it's now been a seven-and-a-half-month journey. Learn about our struggles, embarrassing setbacks, and the reasons behind the delay.
Bad news: It's not a 3 month project... and is taking far longer than expected.
Good news: We're not giving up, and progress is soaring!
Discover the challenges of underestimated timeframes, project management pitfalls, and the unexpected nuances in game development.
We're revamping our approach, scrapping old to-do lists, and establishing schedules for a more controlled development process.
If you're new to our channel, we're Brandon & Nikki from Sasquatch B Studios. We sold our house to start our game studio, and work full time on building our business and making our games, Veil of Maia & Samurado.
Subscribe for NEW game dev videos every Monday & Thursday!
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#gamedev #indiegame #gamedevelopment

[@pixeltroid]

I don't mean to sound harsh. But time and energy are limited resources. If you're doing other time consuming activities in addition to game dev, expect for things to move slowly. If your side project is going to pushed to mid-2024, then I guess your main project will be done only in 2026 or something. I've been working on ONE project for the last 2-3 years and it's STILL not done. It just feels never-ending even though I working on it almost full time! There's always work to do!

[@NeatGames]

*FEEDBACK:* Perhaps change the game to like "Fruit Warriors!" Then you could make more characters based on different cultures, and maybe even match the warrior with the correct regional fruit (Avocados have nothing to do with Japan lol). Examples: Samurai Ume , Taekwondo Persimmon, Raspberry Knight, Plum Viking, Jujitsu Papaya, etc. They could just be visual re-skins or unlockable characters with slightly different base skills/speeds/etc.

[@fernandoperez9025]

I worked for a game studio that took 5 years to develop 4 indie video games that nobody played. Also the clients (game companies) who contacted my boss to hire game devs (me) to help them finish or port their games also had problems, fired people too and canceled projects (like the one I had). So my boss didn’t have any money to pay my salary and fired me two months ago. As you maybe know, this year has been the worst for video game workers. Ten thousand jobs are lost and is expected that maybe in 6 months video game companies start to hire again. Besides of the hard work that a video game implies, they must be based on a really good, interesting and innovative idea to engage players. Creativity, innovation and precision are the key for a game to be successful, things that any of the games that the video game company I worked for have.

[@CodeRadGames]

From personal experiance, rogue-likes are a lot of more work upfront compared to other games. It takes ages to get all the systems fully working. By that time they are working, you find all sorts of issues with gameplay that needs changing. But once you are at the content creation part, its all downhill from then. At least this is how it feels like with my game right now. We will see once I get closer to the end.

[@CodeRadGames]

He is working on a rogue like not a multiplayer real-time strategy game. @@olppa1

[@TESkyrimizer]

I hope thats same for city builders by god

[@ludomancerstudio]

I started watching your Samurado series at the same time I got laid-off in march this year and decided to be a solodev by making my game Fallen Slayers. My plan was to have a demo ready for the june next fest and ask for publishers to fund it in a local event, it didn't worked out as I did not had a demo ready nor was anywhere close to have it and all publishers I talked to denied any deal. I had to find some other freelance work to pay the bills and almost quitted being a indie solodev BUT Bullet Heaven Fest came and I decided to just rush a demo for it. And let me tell you, it was the best thing I could have done. I have 100% gained back my energy from the project, received tons of feedback, now I now 100% what players care and what they don't care and I can iterate based on that. Like you I feel the past two weeks were more productive than the last 3 months all because of a half-baked demo that is released. I would recommend the same for you to do with Samurado. The sooner you have other people playing your game and giving you honest input the more confident you feel about your decisions and how to move forward.

[@DOSRetroGamer]

This. Don't polish every last piece or think weeks about your end game when you don't have anything to show to the public yet. Once I decided to make a 30 minute demo and do my best to make that a fun experience , and THEN continue with the rest of the game, gave me so much more focus and motivation.

[@DOSRetroGamer]

Also it really helps to have a deadline in form of a festival etc.

[@castlevillagegames]

"you cannot fail if you don't quit" so true, but a challenge for every indie developer. Thank you for the video

[@burnheart2965]

No, you just get better at losing.

[@kidsteveee]

TBH this is why i would discourage people from working on too many projects at once... your "dream" project taking "years to finish" will now be a *another* year behind once you've wrapped this game. :(

[@misteriwa]

That part about how long each task actually requires was so true.

[@That_Guy_You_Know]

Cut scope. Release what you have. Its great that you started to organize things more, as well as treating it like a real team project with your wife by having morning standups.

[@engneer216]

Same exact thing is happening to me right now. An easy 2 day feature is taking a whole week. I think I was going so hard on myself. I wasn't able to make things fast because I am a newbie in this job. Seeing a much more experienced dev like you also strugling and going through the same path, made me notice that everyone goes through this path. I think that I understand you. And really support the things that you are doing. Just don't quit as you said. We all achieve what we want!

[@DOSRetroGamer]

He is not really that experienced though. Never published anything.

[@spencersmoot8160]

You have run into the entrepreneur optimism. Being an entrepreneur one has to be optimistic or they would crawl up into a ball and cry. I went to school for game dev. The suggestion for new people is have a feature estimate the time. Add a week then Double it 4 times. Once you get more dev under your belt that time will lessen and you will understand that it takes. Another suggestion is cut shit.

[@Taibot]

It's a marathon not a sprint. Very nice that you share your journey

[@HyuugaRaull]

Man, I must admit that, while veil of maya seems awesome, Samurado is my kind of game, and I'm truly rooting for you guys to finish this game, because I'm anxious to play it! Thanks for sharing this video, I'm in the beggining of my gamedev career and your channel inspire me so much.

[@michaelofstjoseph]

I'm not a game dev, I'm a writer. Trust me, not knowing how long stuff takes is endemic to all creative work. Just ask my WIP novel 😅

[@DOSRetroGamer]

This is less about creative and more about technical tasks though

[@firasbelhadi3234]

Wish you all the best in your journey as indie developers .

[@CloudlessStudio]

I admire the consistency of your uploads, its actually crazy how many you put out

[@flamart9703]

I recently did the same with my project that will take several years. I decided to do something smaller and faster, but in the idea process it also started to swell quickly and so much that I started thinking about doing some of my even smaller ideas first. Hope they won't be cursed by feature creep too. :)

[@ceroenblanco]

I've been doing this for almost ten years. Every game is a challenge, every day I learn somthing new. Love it!

[@Gears2Game]

Perfectionism & Not limiting are the 2 most important realizations I made that hinders every developer in producing a finished game. I am still new as a solo indie game developer, I learned from KZbin videos, online courses and basically just doing the thing. 1.Perfectionism It took me 3 years up to this point. until I realized that perfection keeps you from finishing the game because of constant tweaking of what you think how the game will be, instead of putting it out in the open, receive feedback, harsh criticisms then improve accordingly. 2.Not limiting this looses your creativity by doing this. like for example the enemy spawning you are talking about made it complex although it might have brought good into the game. but you lost focus on creativity. if you tried to limit instead. for example you don't need to do a new enemy spawner implementation like that but instead stick to your current implementation then find ways and be creative on how to drip feed the new enemies to introduce to players. without having a new system. I might be wrong in all of this, but this has helped me a lot on my game dev journey. it freed my mind from many useless things and became more focused on what's already available.

[@PHeMoX]

You say there is no perfect system to develop a game or succeed, but I kind of have to disagree. The problems you face are all self-caused. You went from taking a very high risk, to taking an ever higher risk basically. Yes, a small scope project on the surface might seem to make sense in order to release something more quickly and (hopefully) make some money in the process. But no guarantees there. I'd say your side project game looks decent enough to succeed, but can quickly grow out to be just a second full featured game, completely taking away from your main game project. Ergo, no time was gained at all. It's also really not good to 'blame yourself' in every video. It's not healthy and it won't solve any problems. It may be honest, yes. But there's no point. We make the decisions we make ourselves. No one is forcing us. I also still think it is a big mistake to put so much hope into KZbin as a stable means of income. It's possible, but most of those guys really aren't making games. They're selling the idea of being an indie dev, moreso than actual games. Not to mention how most of them will try to sell you their courses and tutorials on how to make games. If the end goal is becoming a full time KZbinr, then fine. But I'd be careful. It will drain 100% of your time, eventually.

[@DOSRetroGamer]

Man, I wish you and your wife the best in the world, but I plead to you, put a simple gameplay trailer, an animated gif, ANYTHING moving on your steam page. Those screenshots are just underwhelming

[@industriousbug]

What is the lore of Samurado universe?

[@icosium6301]

Good luck in your project

[@lorenzorev]

Estimating software is a difficult task in general, especially when you lack of experience on the domain. Then deadlines are also another challenge, because you know life *exists*! I think you guys are doing great, taking care of parallel things such as podcasts, KZbin, gamedev.. so no need to feel embarrassed here! just huge respect 💌🤟! I've been working as a software dev for 14 years, but just recently jumped onto the game dev train as a side hobby, and I can say the way you develop a game, especially using a game engine like Unity, it differs compared to the usual backend/frontend development way, so I feel I'm learning a lot during this challenging process. Just to say that, even with lots of experience in software dev, I've personally estimated that my "vampire clone study project" would require 2 weeks, and after a month I'm just 70% done 😁 Keep up the good work!

[@flamart9703]

And that 70% done is actually only 30% of the final work. :)

[@kostariev_vadim]

Crying because I've been working on a one-day enemy spawner for a week now😂

[@mmmMindo]

Just remember, good enought is good enought

[@TheUser3D]

David Brevik the creator of Diablo once wrote on twitter: however hard you think it is to make a game, it's 10x harder than that.

[@CitizenCoder]

As a software dev who is at the tail end of building a saas project, I can tell you that if the problem isnt scope creep its definitely not understanding how long software development takes. I thought "oh we should be done in 6 months" we are now 8 months in, with maybe a couple more to go. Knowing how long something takes isnt necessarily your fault, because you have no experiencing finishing and releasing games. A game takes a lot more work. Set a goal, then probably triple it at the very least for software projects.

[@maxelized2645]

In my last 2 week game jam we spent so much time on the enemy spawning system that I had to do all the levels in the last day. I got really good at scoping in game jams but I also go in an adrenaline crunch mode. Meanwhile every steps in bigger project seem to take exponentially more dev time..

[@alexanderkulaev541]

Great video, thanks for sharing your experience and feelings and thoughts on the journey! It's interesting and personal ro me, because I just know decided to do the same, make a smaller game and put my bigger game on pause. I have almost nothing, though, it's all preproduction and concepts for my bigger game, but I already can see it being very ambitious and scopy, more than I perhaps can manage while learning all the game dev stuff. So smaller abd and quicker to make game for me abd my girlfriend. Yes, in this regard your story is similar to mine as well, since I'm working with my GF :) Kudos and best wishes!

[@shavais33]

Where do you get all those hilarious video snippets you put into your videos? Gosh, that would take me a freaking year to find all that stuff, lol. And extract it out and insert it into just the right spot and. Good grief! I was trying to get up the gumption to try to make at least a little progress on my project, now, at 11pm, before going to bed, after a long day filled with work and chores etc., and. I really needed a bit of Brandon energy, so I pulled up KZbin, thinking I might be able to find an old one I hadn't watched yet, and! Pow! My notification lamp lit up and there, like a Christmas present from Santa, was a brand a new post from the Squatch man. Thanks man! /cheers

[@SlainMascot]

Maaaan... For YEARS I started games thinking they'd be small little projects I could finish within a year. It wasn't until a couple of months ago until I found a project that was actually small enough for me to feasibly complete. It's nearly done, but it's been over 3 months and I have not released it yet haha!

[@StealthyShiroeanGames]

Great inner-reflection! At the very least you problems stemmed from your lack of planning rather than lack of consistency. I'm embarrassed with my own work because I've been working on a game that was supposed to take three months as well (although nothing as complex as Samurado) and I started this in January. Ended up down-scoping, not because I thought there was scope creep, but because I wanted to finally say that I completed the game and move on. I think it's still taken me too long to even get this smaller version done but I have been chipping away at it over the last month. Although, the game itself is something that could be created in a game jam weekend... but every little bit helps and hopefully once I finish this one it will be easier to make the next one.

[@richie4956]

4:25 It's not obvious: as developers, we are very hard on ourselves and imagine an expert coder or technical artist laughing at us for being so ignorant, but the reality is no one actually understands how much work goes into game mechanics (other than the experts obviously). Most people are not savants at this stuff and most implementations are way more complex than we initially understand. Your example of having to add code that finds out whether or not a location is viable to spawn items at is a perfect anecdote. It's not that we are unaware of how long a task will take, it's that we are sometimes unaware of what parts of that task will take longer than others, which confuses our mental timeline of the project. Unless you are going into a game project as a Ph.D. computer scientist, there is zero chance this won't happen to you and we as game developers need to be content with that fact.

[@DavidZobristGames]

Even after having published 40 apps in the appstore , having had 3 apps with each around 500k to 1 million, i still struggle with the same struggles. But the shipping helps a good junk of getting the fear of failure on release. 2 of my most succesful games were doing only couple hundered installs ( all free to play) but rised over 2-4 months of doing some marketing. 1 did just grow organic to 500 k. But a lot of games just failed. Specially sometimes my favourites failed. Having some passive money now helps.. But its just so enough to keep it going :/ So I always struggle with do i put my focus on the right thing.

[@michaelnawrocki7913]

Woo hoo top 10 comments! Thanks for the honesty about game dev life. Keep up the good work!!!!

[@shavais33]

This channel often reminds me of this Coldplay song: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZLcemyHd5Zgf6M I think every successful business owner that built it up from nothing has a story like that. "I tried so hard and failed so much but I kept on trying, kept having faith in myself and in what I would eventually achieve, in spite of everything and everyone, and now, what feels like so many lifetimes later... well, the results speak for themselves." That kid, with his parents shouting at him and each other, he's just watching them. He's just watching it go by like a movie. Like it's happening to someone else. Because he knows how it ends. It's how it ends for every person who never gives up.

[@mohamedmusthafa1057]

Thats Really Motivating me Love u Dude❤

[@Surkk2960]

Well, you could be me where it has taken me over 4 years to make something barely considered a game that only has maybe 2 minutes of playtime. Good to know you are on the way to completing an unexpected task, good luck to ya on the build.

[@DOSRetroGamer]

That better be some damn good 2 minutes then 😏

[@Surkk2960]

@@DOSRetroGamer That's the neat part, it isn't.

[@DOSRetroGamer]

What is this project about? I suppose it's more a movie than a game? You know, not every interactive entertainment needs to be a game in the truest form, that's totally legit

[@Surkk2960]

@@DOSRetroGamer No, its a basic arcade style shooting game. Cubes fly in from the sides and you destroy them, the longer you go the more cluttered with cubes the arena gets. I built it to learn how to use Godot, but it also taught me how bad I am at programming.

[@DOSRetroGamer]

@@Surkk2960 why would you only play this for two minutes, do you think it's that boring?

[@alignedgames]

Ive started doing devlogs lately, but I have 3 games out already. I assume you do this on the side? Good job nontheless.

[@SaintPilgrim]

Thank you for making honest videos. May God bless your journey.

[@AndreyMakarov-i7h]

You need to severely underestimate your abilities every time, that's what I've learned the hard way.

[@TESkyrimizer]

I scoped my project for 6 months. Now approaching a year and still probably needing a total of 18 months if I'm being optimistic. UGH THIS IS NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR BUT IM IN TOO DEEP

[@fj06carnone]

My do my entire-screen shaders stay gray even after adjusting my URP settings??? 😭😭😭😭 Please help! Lol

[@evanmashack8242]

What app do you use to track tasks?

[@misteriwa]

It looked like he possibly showed Trello. Some other popular ones are ClickUp and Miro. I personally find Milanote super helpful for organizing and collaborating on my current game project.

[@slavek363]

Trello

[@gabe2o2]

Definitely Trello based on what was shown

[@squali1930]

super transparent dev channel.

[@Gondolaappreciator]

120 clickbait-optimized algo-friendly videos - 0 games released.

[@h0bby23]

aw it's mean lol

[@Gondolaappreciator]

@@h0bby23 How long do you think one of these videos takes to make? A day or two? That's at least six working months, spent on something that seems increasingly pointless. You can't give any substantial advice because you haven't done anything. You can't get new players because you have no game. You might get your name out there for a bit but it's going to turn more sad and more desperate the more time you spend talking about vaguely motivational stuff with 0 results.

[@mmmMindo]

Such a gamer comment. Try paying some bills before being mean.

[@CodeRadGames]

HIs channel is about journey he is taking to become a full time game developer. I think you got wrong idea what is this channel about.

[@tinyvoid633]

Damn that's mean, but also a hard hitting truth

[@FleshToDust]

1:52 into the video and you said honest like 5 times.

[@Coco-gg5vp]

First