So I thought Yurivania 3 would take about 2 months to finish. It now looks like it will take about 12 24 months. I've been figuring out why....
I believe it comes down to these 4 things:
tldr: Easy does not equal quick. Just because something isn't hard to do doesn't mean it will go fast!
- With each Yurivania my standards for quality have risen. In the beginning "runs and is technically finishable" was my criteria. Eventually, my metrics for quality became more ambitious.
Lesson learned: If I want more polish, I need to reserve more time for it!
- I underestimated the amount of work that it would take to integrate already-finished content from the prior Yurivania games.
Lesson learned: Just because two things work on their own doesn't mean they will keep working when you duct tape them together!
- Initially I wanted exactly one minigame. That grew to 3 minigames with variations. This is plain old scope-creep. I knew better but I was swept away in my own excitement 😵
Lesson learned: Don't get too confident! Overscoping is always possible!
- I conflated "easy" with "quick". Almost everything I did in this game was on its own quite easy for me to do. But there was still a lot of it.
Lesson learned: Just because something isn't hard doesn't mean it isn't laborious.
I believe this last point is the biggest culprit of all for this project.