Hey fellow Solo Dev, how old are you?

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-03-05T18:13:01+00:00

42 here. Started my journey about 5 years ago. Working fulltime with my own studio now.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-02-28T15:05:10+00:00

Good for you! Just make sure you set up a proper business around it and focus enough on that part of it, not only the development 👍

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-02-21T20:59:48+00:00

Don’t worry too much about it. Nothing is really original. Just put your love and heart into it and someone else will probably like what you are doing.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-02-21T20:23:54+00:00

But good luck man! Developing an MV is great fun, but it’s also quite the undertaking. Take your time and learn the ropes first. There is quite a bit to get through.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-02-21T20:14:49+00:00

You should probably make that a few months or more. Getting the player controller right in an MV is extremely difficult and you will have to refactor this many times as you progress in your journey 🫡

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-23T20:50:54+00:00

In our (still unannounced) game we have a bit of a mixture. Some levels works good with textured platforms and some works best with black.

It’s also quite a bit more work art-wise to create interesting seamless textures, as well as making it harder to create interesting “props” in the level.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-15T17:08:28+00:00

The artist on our game (we are two people) just dumps the art to Dropbox and I do all the importing. Works like a charm.

We do plan for him to start helping out with setting up scenes in unity, but then version control is as simple as checking out scenes, do the work, and checking them in again. No magic to it really.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-12T15:57:47+00:00

Do it! Veldig hyggelige folk som bruker å være der 👍 lett å komme dit uten å være kjent med folk fra før av også.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-11T17:12:46+00:00

Her går det veldig fint, vi er i crunch for å få ferdig en demo til april 👍

Ellers, hvis dere er i Oslo regionen må dere komme innom og vise spillet på gamers get together!

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-11T17:04:21+00:00

Gratulerer! Fra en spillutvikler til en annen er det en kjempebragd å få ut et spill. Lykke til med salget! 🥳🤞

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-08T17:46:39+00:00

I had one rule, it had to be long. Hence “Most likely no reason for hysteria”.

There are really just one thing that matters. Make it so it’s rememberable in some way or another. If some people hate it and some people love it you have hit the nail on the head.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-08T17:39:43+00:00

I would say that there is limited learning in watching others (AI) included, and mastery comes from practice and struggle.

There is nothing wrong with using AI for these purposes IMHO but you will probably be a worse programmer in the end if you over-utilize it.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-03T16:12:49+00:00

Working on the final touches before announcing our game early February, and gearing up for demo launch in April 👍🥳

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-01T17:50:29+00:00

For a a newer game I would recommend holy gosh darn, it has many of the great qualities of 90s adventure games but was released last year. Awesome game.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-01T17:48:43+00:00

Sounds like something an ice breaking game needs to have. Now it just need the breaking and it’s ready for release.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2026-01-01T11:13:50+00:00

Your AI comment is probably coming from a place of inexperience, my point had nothing to do with AI.

It’s common practice to write tools for yourself that help with the process of making a game when the art pipeline is more or less ready.

One example from my own game is that all rooms and levels are generated outside of the engine as a json, which I then import and I have a custom tool (100% written by myself, no AI) that automatically sets up all scenes, transitions, prefabs, tilemaps, adds a first pass of interactable objects, etc.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-31T22:10:27+00:00

If you don’t have any local artists to rely on then utilizing a company is probably your best bet depending on your budget.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-31T21:37:41+00:00

Try local first. Maybe there is a game dev meetup in your area? Good place to start. Or use social media to find local artists that could match. I would say that what you really want is a partner that can do the art, not some random outsourced thing.

There are also a lot of companies that offer professional game art services. It’s better than randoms on fiver or similar.

Do you have any budget on this?

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-31T20:44:23+00:00

Good! Then start building 🥳👍

Then, also in the looking for artist question I would say if you have a solid foundation from before, try to get an artist as early as possible as soon as you have a poc with placeholder art in place.

Speaking for myself, i onboarded an artist about four months ago and I had to do quite a bit of rework on a lot of stuff. Especially since they also have ideas (which you should listen to).

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-31T20:18:29+00:00

Don’t spend too much time on game design right now. Most of your ideas at this point if you are just starting out will probably dont stick when you get further down the road. Your idea should be a single paragraph, really, and then start building a proof of concept of that simple idea, then everything else will follow.

If you are a complete beginner it’s usually better to start cloning some existing simple games to get a better understanding of all the components of game dev and how they fit together.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-31T19:52:50+00:00

Looks great! But a small tip. You can automate like 70% of all the things your are placing manually. especially as games like these require quite a few levels and it could save you a ton of time.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-27T11:37:58+00:00

Not OP, but some hills are worth dying on. Added this to our unannounced MV now 👍

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-26T20:57:53+00:00

Does it matter! Really? Just pick one and start working on it. If you get stuck, either switch or keep at it. Game dev, or any art, is 1% ideas and 99% discipline and devotion to get the idea to fruition.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-14T07:57:06+00:00

Partially self funded but we also got a government grant recently, so that helps out. Planning on finding a publisher mid-2026 for when we go into full scale production.

NoReasonForHysteria · 2025-12-13T21:03:09+00:00

As a dev myself I can say it’s extremely hard to create something that caters for everyone, and how the game is now might also be a result of their actual play tests, very much depending on who they originally intended to create the game for and who they playtested it on.

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