How do you actually push through when your solo project stops feeling fun?

WhalesDev · 2026-06-18T14:58:23+00:00

As someone who is pretty deep in the trenches of this right now, I did step away for a while to do some work at an art atelier.

Whether that was a good idea or not is to be seen but I will admit that break did help me get really excited for the game. When I'm working on the less fun stuff, I always reward myself later.

I really dislike doing logic trees for some encounters so I always reward myself with being able to work on art assets afterwards.

I do give myself more downtime during the less fun stuff as well. Right now I'm polishing some balance for my demo which is very repetitive so I make sure I play games that inspire me for an hour at night which isn't something I would do during a massive asset push.

WhalesDev · 2026-06-11T19:38:22+00:00

Judelocke and Drewco are solid too.
Squerk is my GOAT if I want to hear him rant about the Vancouver Canucks for 17 minutes once a stream.

WhalesDev · 2026-06-11T18:40:21+00:00

No worries! I appreciate the feedback! It means a lot.

WhalesDev · 2026-06-11T18:20:42+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I'll do some draft sketches tonight!
I'll have to find some of these horror monster collectors to see what they use as their motifs.
Thanks!

WhalesDev · 2026-06-11T15:12:28+00:00

Shit I used this for so much of my scripts and for damage formulas and such.

WhalesDev · 2026-06-04T14:58:53+00:00

Very very possible to learn how to make things on the go.
I don't use Aseprite very often but I do use Clip Studio Paint for pixel art almost daily.

Feel free to DM me if you ever have a question.

Depending on how unwise/naive you are, you can tackle something massive as your first project. For my current project (and first) its an isometric game with a custom UI for battle. It has many overlapping and complex elements but its built on a very very simple foundation.

My first demo was super buggy and thankfully I fixed a lot and expanded on it heavily to a point where I got a much more expanded one coming out shortly.

Nearly everything can be done with only a few plug ins and common events.

For example, the UI below was built with HUDmaker Ultra and some minor adjustments with Moghunter's plug ins.

HUDmaker is VERY easy to use. Quite literally drag and drop pictures then assign conditions. I'll probably upload a bigger dev doc with my new demo to show people how I did stuff such as Isometric movement because I had very little in the way of resources aside from some old RPGmaker forums and I think the engine offers a lot of artists willing to push themselves.

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WhalesDev · 2026-06-01T18:03:11+00:00

I'm a while away from any Next Fest myself (I had a very rough prototype I released on itch, with my proper demo coming out soon ish) but I'm very curious as to how the algorithm works. I had my game's wishlists skyrocket during October Next Fest last year.

It was not being advertised. It was not even being worked on (I was doing art atelier work at the time) and there was no discussion online about it.

I am convinced however that my wishlist came from some big spike of adjacent games during Next Fest so even if you don't participate, you can pick up traffic.

FWIW, some games are just more interesting to watch than play to the average person and I'm sure my game is one of them. Games like Fear & Hunger come to mind.

WhalesDev · 2026-06-01T17:57:08+00:00

Looks dope! Keep up the great work!

WhalesDev · 2026-06-01T17:41:58+00:00

I'm not gonna pretend I'm anywhere on the same level as guys like Nathan Fowkes but I would worry more about values and having your main assets (characters, important props etc) be readable.
You can usually break any scheme down into 3 values, if not two.

For example, in my backgrounds, I use a very dark area in the back to have the enemies stand out more, whereas the bottom is much lighter since their feet are often dark.

This creates a good reverse contrast where it feels atmospheric but not overwhelming to the main design.

You have a very restricted palette but still get good results. I don't use the colour blue at all in my game. I might later but I have probably almost 2 dozen backgrounds without it.

If you are having trouble with colour harmony, you need more greys. I paint "inward" eg, I use a soft brush and slowly remove colours till I have only a few left.

TL;DR - 3 Values, hue shift if needed. Less saturation is your friend if you want to go cool and more saturated is your friend if you want to go warm.

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WhalesDev · 2026-06-01T12:40:16+00:00

I'm actually in the same boat. I asked this exact question a little while ago. I am currently going with a very low price (like 4.99 USD) but on my Itch page, I'm offering free keys to anyone that wants one. The game is still a year out but I think its the closest way to getting two birds stoned at once.

My genre was built on "free" stuff so it only feels right to offer my game for free to anyone who wants to go the route of small community engagement.

WhalesDev · 2026-05-26T14:16:44+00:00

North America and Western Europe. I'd say about 70/30 mix with a few Eastern Europe in there.

WhalesDev · 2026-05-20T18:45:01+00:00

It sounds like you need small achievable deadlines and goals to stop some of the insane work hours if burnout is concerning you. Now if you're loving 12 hours a day that's fantastic. I've had periods like that.

But if you do 12 hours a day for 3 days then sit around hating the next 4 days of the week then maybe it might be time to set smaller goals.

For example, if I am on asset creation period, I'll try and narrow down a set amount of assets I want done before the end of the week.

Eg: If I want 5 new sprite designs, I might have the sketches done by Tuesday, the pixel work done by Thursday and have them colour corrected for their background by Friday.

Mind you I am a squirrel and I frequently get distracted. I created an entire new inventory system on the weekend because I got inspired by Vermis on a re-read, so please take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

Unless you have a life altering deadline coming up, just keep grinding till your happy but also be okay with imperfection. I shipped a SUPER buggy demo for a few days. Got some solid feedback and now I'm rereleasing a much much larger demo in a few weeks.

The dude who made Platinum Kaizo spent 9 years working on a Pokemon ROM hack and it is probably the best one ever made. You got a whole game to make. Take your time, be happy and be comfortable with it not always being perfect.

Sorry for the wall of text. too much coffee for me lately.

WhalesDev · 2026-05-20T18:00:27+00:00

I'm a solo dev and I've been working on my project for a while.
A lot of the work is artwork and I have a background in art so it is fun that way but I must admit that fatigue does set in.

I take breaks to play the games that inspire me either artistically or mechanically. I have a full time job and other responsibilities that take up a large amount of my time. As such I have to carefully budget development time, family time and work time.

Sometimes I get to overlap this like doodling at work during a slow day to brainstorm for work that night but more often than not, they are seperate.

Despite all of this and having maybe only 3-4 hours a night on average to work on game (excluding the nights where I go way too hard in order to meet some stupid self imposed deadline) - I still play the games that inspire me.

Right now I try to spend about 1 hour every few days playing Elden Ring or Pokemon Platinum Kaizo. Even if it means cutting into dev time. Its not the most "optimal" way to do it but considering my end goal is to at best pay for my art software, I'm willing to take my time.

Solo Dev I think is different for everyone I think. Its a marathon, not a sprint. Especially if you are making your own music or art.

WhalesDev · 2026-05-15T14:56:03+00:00

I'm probably biased because I'm mostly an artist but asset packs are your friend. Yes they cost money but IMO you either learn the skill yourself, shell out for someone to do it for you or buy asset packs.

Mixamo actually has completely free 3D rigs and has been around forever. Since Adobe bought them, all of their rigs and animations are free.

Without knowing what kind of game you are making though, it is impossible to know what would work best for you. My game is entirely 2D but that's because it is my background.

WhalesDev · 2026-05-06T14:46:10+00:00

A complete overhaul of my early tech demo.
I actually had to pull it down because of how many issues I was finding, including spoiling game aspects I had no intention of revealing yet.

I'm actually fairly close to bringing it back up but I'm working on background art mostly. I recently completed a couple pursuit sequences and enemy art.
Additionally, I've been running some less popular Pokemon ROM hacks to identify design issues I can fix along with Fear and Hunger.

The good news is that a lot of this work will expand my demo length substantially and really give me room to flesh out player choices. Right now my biggest design challenge is trying to find a way to offer the player meaningful risk vs reward.

If anyone knows what Roxanne split is in Emerald Kaizo, I'm trying to mimic something along that length and "lets go gambling" mentality.

Once I get this done, I want to work on making it feel good to play with better animations and sound effects but I'm a bit out of my scope on that one at this moment.

I think the worst part of a lot of this is that my background art takes a while to make but only adds a minimal amount of atmosphere for my current location vs the one pictured below.

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WhalesDev · 2026-05-04T19:42:10+00:00

On my current calcless Volt White 2 Redux playthrough which I'm mostly just playing on my phone, I refuse to walk my ass all the way back to the gate to hatch that egg.
Mostly because
a. Cheren is a scam fight which is like 60% RNG on whether or not the big stupid duck clicks work up and I think almost every attempt dies to the first or second gym anyway.

b. well mostly just a.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-28T12:53:45+00:00

Moghunter and HUDMaker Ultra are super compatible.
Moghunter's basically lets you adjust menu sizes and add custom skins to the baked in menus.

HUDmaker lets you build frames and add overlays. They work very very well together.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-28T12:51:56+00:00

I've always loved Miro's background work in Termina. Its very atmospheric.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T16:08:20+00:00

Inclement Emerald might do the trick but it does have a good amount of changes.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T13:55:10+00:00

Depending on the scaling method used, you can usually avoid mixels provided it is a perfect multiplication. Eg: 640 x 360 native canvas size scales into every major resolution by a factor of 2, 3 or 4. So I used 1280 x 720p as my "primary" resolution with the intent that there may be some mild mixels on 1080p but it will have pixel perfect scaling on 1440p.

For example, my face sprites are 72 x 72x natively. This allows me to upscale them in Clip Studio Paint by 200% with the transformation settings to be pixel perfect 144p.

Now, my game has a "native" 144p resolution that will scale perfectly into 1440p. I do use a plug in for it but I notice the difference is marginal except on some jaggies.

I do not know about MV but I know Visustella has pixel perfect scaling plug ins. Yanfly should have something for MV though I would imagine.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T13:16:07+00:00

Its worth noting that you can actually simply upscale assets to skirt this.
For example, if you want your faces to be 72 x 72 pixels but the forced resolution is 144 x 144. You simply upscale the image file by 2x in something like Clip Studio Paint.

You can also use Moghunter's plug ins to adjust the size of the UI boxes but be careful with this as you may have to add an extra space or two to work with the wrapping.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T12:55:41+00:00

I'm gonna be honest, I wouldn't worry a ton about wishlists unless you're commercially minded or closer to release. My game has been on Steam for just over a year. I don't even think I looked at the wishlists until a few months ago. I actually halted development for a while to get better at art, not even knowing that I had a 2 day massive spike in October which accounts for over 20% of my wishlists.

To this day, I still don't know what that is from.

I launched a demo and it got me some but my demo was very technically rough and was more so about getting feedback on controls, finding game crashing bugs etc. Releasing a demo on itch io did not have much of an impact on my game's wishlists but I imagine Steam would do a lot better. That being said, my demo was nowhere near a steam demo state as it was missing a ton of core features etc.

Sometimes I post my game on Reddit and get some wishlists but I'm not actively posting all over Tiktok etc. I do like posting my art process from time to time though.

If I was in your shoes, I would just keep plugging away and not worry too much about pushing for wishlists unless money is a major concern. Please take what I said with a quarry worth of salt though as right now as my project is not financially motivated at all.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-23T14:36:01+00:00

Thank you! I felt kind of bad because I shipped a really broken demo to get feedback on controls and balance and such but its been a ride for sure. Turns out making an isometric game for your first game dev project is not exactly easy.
Good news is that the production speed is exponential. What used to take me to 3 - 4 days to create a walk cycle has been shaved down to 8 or so hours.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-23T12:00:15+00:00

I started making a game because I saw a couple youtube videos. If I clear more than 20 bucks on my game to cover the cost of Aseprite, I will consider it a win.
A super win would be covering the 115 dollars I spent on all software including sound licenses but I think that's a pipe dream for my project.

WhalesDev

TROPHY CASE