GB Studio Central just published a post mortem I wrote on Yurivania 3: Circle of the Polycule!
In it I extol the virtues of markdown as an all-in-one game production tool and I lament the dangers of conflating "easy" with "quick"!
coder, producer, music fan, teagirl
- she/her
- mxashlynn.gay/
my building-gamer blog
cohost.org/MxBuildermy yurivania shrine
midnightpalace.gay/posts from @MxAshlynn tagged #game production
also:
In my last post I examined the scope of a subset of NES games in detail to see what solo developers could learn.
Now that we have a better understanding of what these games did, I want to talk a bit about what they didn't do.
After this, I want to re-ask myself if using these games as a guide makes sense for bedroom devs, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
tl;dr 👈
Here's what I learned:
- ✂ Set limits. Preproduction includes identifying modern features to not implement.
- Including anything that they didn't means doing work that they didn't.
- ⏱ Less is more. For solo devs, short games beat long ones.
- ① Promise only one thing. Identify what is most crucial in your game to minimize time and money spent elsewhere.
- 🔁 Polish what you promise. Know what you're delivering, and put your time and money there.
- 👥 Know your players. Ask what assets and content they care about, and put your time and money there.
- 🙋 Be sure you like this approach. Early NES games don't always mean small or quick!
In my last post I began looking at a subset of NES games as potential scope models for solo game devs, especially bedroom devs.
The idea was that modern tools might balance out a lack of budget.
In this post we'll break the monolithic data table down and see if we can draw some focused conclusions.
tl;dr 👈
To match Black Box Era games a developer should expect to:
- 💰 Move fast. Spend no more than one year on any one game.
- 🦠 Focus efforts. Promise either a great narrative or great mechanics, not both.
- 🖌 Put effort where it matters. Downplay environmental detail in exchange for detailed player characters and enemies. Emphasize sound effects rather than music.
- ⚖ Scope by Genre
- 📘 Narrative Games (including RPGs and MacVentures) are always big, with 2K to 10K words and more visual and audio content than other genres.
- 🛡 RPGs need at least 400 screens-worth of explorable space, at least 40 distinct enemy types, around 40 items/equipment, and 10 or fewer NPC types.
- 🏰 Metroidvanias need at least 500 screens-worth of explorable space and at least 14 well-defined mechanics, but don't require RPG elements.
- 🦘 Platformers (non-Metroidvania) need 200 screens-worth of playable space, generally across 12ish levels, with about 30 enemy types and around 16 collectables/power ups. Expect to write less than 500 words and to have few NPCs.
A few years ago a smart friend of mine suggested using NES games as models to limit scope for contemporary commercial indie games.
The idea was, while studios in the '80s had larger budgets than indie teams do today, our tools are much more advanced so we may be able to do as much with less.
In this post I break down what games I looked at, why, and how. Then I present the main data table. Deeper analysis will follow in the next post!
tl;dr 👈
Here are the most important early take-aways:
- 👥 Team Size is most often 4 or 5.
- 🗓 Dev Time is almost always one year.
- ⏳ Most games are beatable in about 3 hours.
- 1️⃣ Most games are single player.
- 🧰 Less than 10 mechanics is typical.
- 🎼 Soundtracks tend to have about 11 songs.
- 🔊 Most games have about 23 sound effects.