My way is an indie developer, several years

For several years now I have been creating games. Sometimes in free time from work, sometimes in breaks between work, and sometimes instead of it. During this time I have released several games, a couple of which may be worthy of attention. In this publication I want to tell you about the path I traveled, from the designer who wanted to make games to the designer who makes the games.

Foreword

I don’t really remember how it all began. How many can remember - the games were near - always. Soviet electronics in kindergarten, eight-bit in the lower grades, sixteen-bit in the middle, and of course - the first computer games in school. Therefore, it is difficult to say when did the desire to make the games yourself ...

Now I work as a graphic designer in a small city and I like my work, but, first, there is not a lot of money here, and second, I don’t really want to work for someone all my life. In light of the fact that I don’t have the ability to organize groups of more than 1 person, and I don’t like working with customers in principle - it’s possible not to consider creating your own business. There remains the development of indie games, especially since the promise of this trend as a whole does not cause any doubts, and the Internet is full of success stories of singles who have achieved crazy success in a fairly short time.
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The first steps

For several years now I have been making various attempts to create something that they will play into and that will bring money, at least the same as in the main job.

The first trial ball was an attempt to create a game for Vkontakte. A good action script programmer was found with a very affordable price tag. Together with him we made my first game - three tests for visual memory, attention and IQ level, which brought absolutely no income and barely covered the costs for the developer - after I sold it in a couple of months. By the way, the game is still alive, although not quite healthy (the ratings have stopped working, apparently due to a change in hosting B.D. ...):



Then I started the second game for Vkontakte. It was supposed to be a zombie runner on the Alternativa3D engine. The advantage of this engine before the same Unity3d at that time was that for its work it was not necessary to install anything but a flash on your computer (which almost everyone already has). I have drawn the whole environment, some interface elements, made and animated 3d models of opponents. The programmer did most of the core gameplay and maybe in a few months this game would see the light, but something happened that happened ...

Visual programming

Once, while reading my favorite Habr, I came across an article with a review of Construct2 and understood - that’s it! This is exactly what will allow me - the absolute humanities - to make the games myself, without the need to pay for the work of the programmer, without the need for kilometers of correspondence with explanations to him of his ideas and visions of the game mechanic. So, at this moment all the work on the game for “Vkontakte” with the working title “dead run” was curtailed and the immersion in the development of games for mobile devices and visual programming began.

Just a week later, the prototype of the first game, which was successfully launched on my phone, was ready. I must say, this is quite a pleasant feeling when your ideas do not just remain in the photoshop layout - they come to life and behave as the creator intended. In the course of work, I learned that there is a debugger in my development tool and it is not at all necessary to display changing variables on the screen, and to evaluate performance, it is not always necessary to run subtotals of development directly on a mobile device.

In parallel with programming (if you can call the process of poking a mouse into pre-prepared blocks responsible for the actions and conditions under which they are performed), the characters of my game, environment, interface elements and other graphics were drawn.



It must be said that with such a format, ideas that are born when drawing a character can be reflected almost immediately in the code and see how well they fit into the concept of the game, and the development process itself stops tiring with monotony, since you constantly have to switch between different types of activities : programming, drawing, inventing various interaction mechanics, etc.

Googleplay

The first game was created quite long and painfully, undergoing dramatic changes in the process of creation, all this time, as probably any novice indie had a feeling that you are making a real hit, that the game after release will definitely bring a lot of money. It was this feeling that gave me strength for multiple game refinements and many hours of searching forums for solving problems (by the way, I must say that construct2 is quite large — a lively forum where I found answers to 99% of the questions that arise).

And here it is a long-awaited moment - the game is ready, tested by friends and uploaded to googleplay, the description is written, the icon seems to be what you need:



Holding a shovel in one hand, with which I intended to rake in money, with the other hand I pressed the cherished button “publish” and ... iiiii ...
Crazy 200 downloads in the first two weeks after publication and the game sank in countless other games without hitting any of the tops in any country in the world:



The one who does nothing is not mistaken, I thought, and set about creating the next game. This time it was decided to choose the genre in which success is most likely. After analyzing the tops of games, it was decided to make a shooting gallery, as the ratio of ease of implementation / popularity of the genre seemed to me to be optimal.

It seemed that creating an unpretentious shooting gallery did not take much time, but in the process of implementation it was decided to add different chips to the game, such as defeat zones, different reaction times for different opponents, different weapons, etc. As a result, all this took a little more than six months. The result was depressing, as it was the last time: several hundred downloads and deep immersion into the abyss of other similarly unknown games.

Long-awaited success

Rubbing a hole in the forehead with a rake, I set about creating the next game.

This time it was decided to create a game for the week and at the same time launch it to post reviews on all possible resources. In accordance with these requirements, the fishing genre was chosen.

No sooner said than done. The game was ready and published two weeks later (the creation took a week and even a week to fix all the bugs), along with the release letters were written asking for reviews of my game on more than 20 websites dedicated to android applications. Of course, with such terms, there was no question of adding any interesting things to the gameplay, the main focus was on the graphics and simplicity of the gameplay.



As a result - the first, though not great, but success. The game hit the top of the new products of Russia and the main top of Russia, brought $ 1500 and continues to bring $ 50 a month.

Attempt number two

Inspired by success, in a couple of weeks I released another small puzzle game, I used the same promotion methods as last time, but I didn’t achieve any results. Apparently this creation of mine was too simple ...

Remembering my first and not deservedly forgotten game, in which so much energy was invested, the idea came to make the second series of this creation. Almost all the graphics were ready and it only remained to complement it with what the previous version lacked. After re-reading the reviews, I tried to correct and add everything that the players asked me to do.

Literally within a month and a half, all the improvements were made, an updated icon was drawn and the game was published.



Already a week, as the game appeared in the market. The application got into the top of the new “adventure” category in 12 countries and at the very bottom of the “new games” in Russia.

We have what we have

Here, in fact, all my progress to this point. If you divide the profit by the elapsed time, then it turns out that each hour spent on development brought me about 8 p. Not a lot ... And yet, despite modest successes, the desire to engage in the creation of games is not lost. I plan to continue uploading my crafts on Google Play in the hope of ever making this type of activity my main job.