Many players may be a little curious about independent development. Through this article, I will share my independent development process and thoughts, which may answer some of the players’ doubts.
the first year
When I resigned two years ago, I had a plan for the future: it is impossible to work part-time, and I want to start my own company. Why start a company for independent development? Because the company is more convenient and efficient in many things (for example, the company can only get the version number), the company system is also conducive to teamwork.
Why do we need a team? Because game development is a huge project, and one person's energy and abilities are limited, it is difficult to make a game with only one person. However, when looking for a small partner to cooperate, pay attention to the division of responsibilities and the distribution of income first-talking about money does not hurt feelings, not talking about money will hurt feelings. In addition, as much as possible, plan and budget first, and prepare the money before starting work.
However, as a poor and unachievable developer, I not only have no money but no one will invest in me. Where should I get the money? I think the most reliable way is to develop independently and try crowdfunding when the development looks good.
So I played games for a month or two first... After a few years in the company, I must have fun playing games, right? In the next few months, I made some general development tools and learned Houdini (a kind of three-dimensional software) to prepare for the formal development later. During this period I played some more games...Oh, half a year passed like this. 
Many people go on the road of independent development in order to make the game in their hearts, and many things I want to do, I still don't have the objective conditions to put them into practice. In order to reduce the budget, I decided to make a small game first. I want to keep the starting point of independent development as low as possible, and then challenge larger projects when I am more fully prepared. (This will probably bring the joy of Daguai upgrade!)
What kind of mini game do you do? When I was in high school, I often used my classmate’s mobile phone to play flying shooting games and constantly challenged the highest score. It was a rare fond memory of a boring high school. Yes, I want to make a flying shooting game. This is a small goal to achieve when I was young.
From the beginning, I decided to make a level mode, pure boss battle. The level mode is to match the world leaderboards. I want players to experience the fun of constantly challenging the leaderboards; the pure boss battle is because I dislike the modular design of first brushing the creeps and then fighting the boss, as if the fun of the game is brought out by boredom... …
Regarding the story, considering the cost constraints, I decided to make the most of the text-you know what I mean, right? Of course, players will be allowed to skip the story. For this type of game, the story is usually not important, but I do not intend to deal with it casually. I once thought about this question: What if human society is managed by an absolutely perfect and infinitely powerful individual? He always makes the best decision and no one raises objections. The most important thing is that he does not need an extra power system... I think this question is very interesting, so I decided to write the script based on this, and then wrote it for three months. ... 
As for the role, I want to make the feeling of an old cartoon. Since I have never studied art and have no money to hire professionals, I have to grind my guns on my own. I painted while learning, and I had to switch to pixel style after I finished painting. It took more than two months to get it done.
Making development tools, learning modeling, writing stories, drawing characters, designing user interfaces, researching technology, playing games, reading, and watching dramas are all the content of the first year. Looking back now, I think it's horrible to develop alone! Time is not enough, so we must find a partner to do it together!
the second year
At the beginning of last year, I almost ran out of money, so I put the development tools I made before on the developer store for sale, but this was just a drop in the bucket. At that time, I had two choices: work or borrow money. I chose the latter and solicited funds (borrowed money) from group friends in my own group. My idea is that even if the project fails completely in the end, it will not be too late to work again-of course, I believe this will not be necessary. Fortunately, a few group friends eventually borrowed more than 100,000 from me.
I know, borrowing money in the group, this operation seems a bit weird... A friend asked me, why not work for two years and save some money before independent development? For me, if I work just to save money, I am sure that no employer will offer a price that is satisfactory to both of us... Since part-time work can solve the problem of money, let it be the last option.
Many developers despise music. Although I am just making a small game, I demand that I must do it exquisitely. It's easy to be small, but difficult to be refined. My idea is to give up some high-cost things that have nothing to do with the core experience, such as cutscenes and dubbing; and those things that have a great impact on the core experience, such as battlefield music and visual effects. To put it simply, either don't do it or do it well. I plan to make the music of every level in the game different, and I will release a separate OST in the future. This requires a lot of high-quality music, so music occupies most of the development cost.
In terms of art, I want to make a special pixel style. In this regard, I was inspired by "The Last Night": they introduced 3D rendering technology into the pixel style, so that the rough pixels produced an exquisite effect. After a period of exploration, I decided to add lighting based on the pixel style and vectorize the pixel material for unlimited rotation and scaling. Later, I also added multi-layer rendering with reference to "Spirit and the Will of Firefly" to further enhance the visual effect. 
I often see players saying that indie games don’t need to spend too much effort on the screen. This is actually a saying that they don’t know enough about development. Game art is divided into two major aspects, technical and non-technical, and it is difficult for independent developers to cover everything. Therefore, it is wise not to stubbornly do what you don’t do well, and instead make the things you are good at unique (or “don’t do it or do it well”), so that you can still make an attractive picture. .
Around the middle of last year, a friend joined the project. We plan to start crowdfunding after making one or two levels. At this time we encountered a problem. The two of us live far apart, which makes it difficult to communicate. Development communication is usually accompanied by body language and specific situations. "What is this option for?" "You draw your concept", even technicians often need to solve problems face to face for non-technical personnel, so remote cooperation is very inefficient, especially at the beginning.
For long-term considerations, we decided to move to Chengdu, rent a large house together to save money, and use the living room as an office. It was summer, and in order to prevent cat heatstroke, the move was delayed until October, and it took almost a whole month to get it done. It is conceivable that our progress was very slow during Xiaqiu. Thanks to the help of another friend, we were able to spare time to prepare for the crowdfunding.
We have prepared Chinese and English materials at the same time, and plan to publish crowdfunding on both Modian (domestic crowdfunding website) and Kickstarter (foreign crowdfunding website). The crowdfunding on Kickstarter started soon. 5 people supported us on the first day, 3 people on the second day, 2 people on the third day, and we cancelled the crowdfunding on the fourth day.
In hindsight, there are many reasons for our failure in crowdfunding on Kickstarter. One of the most important is that we started crowdfunding in a daze without understanding what crowdfunding is all about and without doing our homework. Publicity before crowdfunding is very important, and it must first get enough attention. We also underestimated the difficulty of propagating abroad. We thought it would not be too late to propagate after the crowdfunding started. In fact, no one could see our propaganda.
After summing up the mistakes, we decided to focus on domestic crowdfunding first. After all, we understand the domestic environment and language better. With the help of many people, we finally got the attention that met our expectations.
Some thinking
The story can only end here, because the next part has not happened yet. Looking back on the past two years, I feel that I am too slow. Lack of money and lack of people is on the one hand, on the other hand, my work schedule is too random and inefficient. I guess many individual developers have this experience, due to lack of restraint, life is messy, such as often working at sunset and resting at sunrise... In short, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is very important! Whether for health or efficiency!
Now I want to talk about something else. My friend asked me: What are you drawing?
I also asked myself this question. But to find the answer, you must be sincere enough with yourself. Who would be insincere to yourself? Just as the farmer thinks that if he becomes an emperor, he will definitely be a good emperor, we are all sincere to ourselves.
Fame and fortune are both important. With them, you can attract talents and make better games. But they are just means, not ends. The game is interesting, the creation is interesting, these are what I want to explore. But if you want to run a company well, you have to be distracted by various things. I am willing to do this, in fact, not just to make games, I have other purposes.
Not long ago, I saw an article about excessive overtime work in the game industry. A developer made this analogy: A group of people felled in the forest, and it took half of it to realize that they had cut the wrong forest. In fact, this situation is very common, as well as those 3A-level projects we are familiar with. When this happens, the game company will let employees work overtime to catch up.
If you compare it to the film industry, the development process of many games is roughly equivalent to shooting the movie before the script is written, and thinking about the script while filming, and changing the script to remake half of the film... You can imagine what a terrible disaster this is! Compared with the film industry, the game industry is far from mature or industrialized. It is impossible to use "creation is full of uncertainty" to hide shame.
To solve this problem, it's simple to say, referring to the film industry, first "write a good script" and make an overall plan in the lowest cost way, and then invest resources to "start filming." But the problem in practice is that a company that is already in operation has a strong inertia, and it is difficult to reverse the way it operates. 
A simple example: after the project is completed, the employees are idle, the boss will let these people immediately put into the next project. After all, money is being burned every day, and it is impossible to wait for the main creative staff to think clearly before starting work. In turn, these manpower will also put pressure on the main creative staff, and they must make decisions as soon as possible, so as not to leave employees idle. In this case, how many correct decisions can be made?
"Why do you think you can do it? Because are you smarter than them?" the little friend asked me. I am certainly not smarter than them, I just sincerely want to solve this problem. A friend of mine was looking for a job some time ago. He told me that he interviewed many companies, and they all said directly that they had to accept "996" when they entered the job interview. The management sincerely believes that working overtime is justified, and the creative staff sincerely believe that creation is a constant trial and error. We are all sincere, so I have to start my own company.
Of course, solving this problem is not enough to make people willing to stay. The most important thing is to create an environment that allows developers to give full play to their talents and enjoy the happiness of self-realization. This goes back to the topic of this article: indie games. A certain teacher said in a program a few days ago that the self-expression of independent games exceeds commercial considerations. I agree with this definition of indie games. Independence is self-realization, and maintaining the independence of creation is the answer I want.
Some people think that "maintaining the independence of creation" will ultimately be the welfare of a few people. In my opinion, everyone in the development team just has a different division of labor, and there is no hierarchy. It's just that someone must be responsible for the decision, which will cause N-1 out of the N ideas to be killed, frustrating the people who contributed the N-1 ideas. The main point of this is, why is the "1" left behind? The value of a good decision maker is to try to keep good ideas, not "my" ideas. Only in this way can we build an equal environment where everyone can trust it and continue to contribute new ideas. At this time, it is no longer necessary to be frustrated by being denied. On the contrary, this is a comforting thing, because better ideas have been gained.
Having said that, what is my ideal company like? After thinking for a long time, I found a few words to summarize: independent, sincere, and happy. Making this company is the most challenging game I will play. (In that case, I am still in 
Novice Village ...) Picture source: Game www.laoshoucun.com Game
Thank you
The past two years have passed so fast, I feel like I have passed by without doing anything...Time is really precious! Finally, I would like to say that I have received a lot of help during this period: friends who can crowdfund on Kickstarter can’t do without friends’ help; when I don’t have money, my group friends have funded me more than 100,000; my friends’ UP masters and friends also Help us promote crowdfunding unconditionally (I learned later that one of his dynamics is related to many interests); a group friend who studied abroad helped us translate a lot of promotional content; my friend’s game was just released, and I picked up two of them when the bug was fixed in the middle of the night. Hours of phone calls patiently explained to me about the company's affairs; the former boss took a noon time apart from his busy schedule to share with me the experience of promotion and crowdfunding; a player even offered to come up with a month's salary to support us ...
There are so many people who have done so slowly to help. First of all, I am grateful, and then I am sorry! Next, I will devote myself to development and do my best to make the game well. I hope that the final answer will meet everyone's expectations, and I hope I can finally pass the game perfectly!