Why You Will Burn Out as a Solo Developer and How to Avoid It - Essential Tips 

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What I learned: Once burnt, you cannot burn again. I simply don't care anymore. I just work on my project and thats it. Just dont make a game that would take you 10 years or you will lose your mind for good.

I can speak on this exact journey as someone whose taken the road most say I shouldn’t have. I’ve spent the last 3.5 years learning all of the areas of development that I needed to make the game I wanted to. I focused on learning these skills over releasing games I wasn’t passionate about. I’m now about 6 months into my first game and I’m so glad I did it that way. When starting, it seems like you rarely have a good/great day of progress. Feels like you’re always stuck on something. Now I rarely have bad days. The climb is perpetual, but the more time spent building your game dev muscles, the easier the journey is. I wouldn’t be honest though without saying it it takes a toll. Especially when finances and life is weighing you down at the same time when you know a successful game can change all of it. Just have to keep at it and don’t give up. Embrace the pain.

Yes, I also experienced burnout in the 2nd and 3rd years. I relieved the burnout by taking a short break and going to enjoyable places, then returned to making games.

I know the value of a "30 years experience Game Dev" giving advice may be extremely significant but I personally find it to be more realistic, more personal, and more connected to hear someone who is in a similar situation of just trying to make it as a Game Dev and make the games they want to make. It's cool that you're confident enough to also have a video talking about this with meaningful advice and insight that you put it online despite the judgement that likely comes by doing that. Nice video, man!

This video Is so good! (I didnt realise how complicated all the little things could be in game development) terrifying

This is probably my favorite game dev video advice I've seen, not because it's a typical super professional "I've been a game dev for 10 years" type of video, it's told from a perspective of just trying to make it as a solo dev despite the shortcomings and potential burnouts, it feels more real and humble, and provides personal commentary. Your confidence to make a video like this with meaning advice and insight for people like you is very admirable. Btw I think your 2.5d game looks incredibly neat, the simple artstyle and unique appearance with the 3d perspective gives it an irresistible charm for me, sorta like paper mario as you mentioned. Great video, although I'd recommend using the more accurate Dunning-kruger graph on Wikipedia, as it much more research cited than the millions of cheap inaccurate graphs of the effect. Thanks for the advice!

I've been working on my game for almost 4 years now, and I've burnt myself out quite a few times. In my case, frustrations with the game is usually the catalyst. The first couple of years I didn't have a clear direction for the game, and I spent so much time trying things, only to rip them out again because it didn't work or feel right. When you do that for a prolonged period of time, you lose focus and frustration starts to build up. At some point it overflows and I just abandon the game entirely for a very long time. I've been taking breaks of 3-6 months multiple times. When I come back, the first thing I do is cut scope and simplify as much as I can. And you're right, that really helps. Like, a lot! I've been through that at least a couple of times now, every time refining the game idea even further, and once you have a super clear plan and vision and know how to make it happen, it's pretty much just smooth sailing. I still take breaks (for life reasons, and some times you just need to go do something else for a while), but it's been reduced to weeks at a time. Question is, will I be any wiser when the time for game #2 comes around? Sure, I'll be better at managing expectations for myself, and I'll know it's important not to.. well, try to over-achieve, basically. But still, game development is very much a matter of trial and error. You can't always plan everything in advance. An idea that sounds great in your head and on paper may not work so well once it's in the game. So yeah, these things are bound to happen. But I hope and believe that over the course of multiple reasonably scoped games I'll become better and better and hopefully more efficient.

How to Be a GREAT Solo Dev: Keep Inspiration around you and Negative Influences away. People, places and things that draw your attention away from the inspirations are Negative Influences. The worst part with Solo Devving is the wrong environment and being atound people who suck the inspiration out of the area.

Love this, thank you for the inspiration, motivation, and validation!

Thanks for the video! I was burnt out of my first game for like 2 months. It's still kind of on pause. I'm glad you're back into it with renewed focus!

Awesome video. It's nice seeing an honest approach with realistic expectations.

Agreed on all of it. Took me years to just try to make a small game, and then the actual small game took me a couple years to finish! :D

The nice thing about multi-disciplinary projects is that when you burn out on one part, you can work on another and it's still making progress toward the goal. Where you run into trouble is when you come up with an idea for a new project and can't resist working on that instead.

hell yea lmaooo, we're all climbing out of the pit of despair together LOL

thank you for this reason man. It made me realize that I focused too much on the code (I am a software engineer), trying to have it all well organized and structured, with patterns, etc... I've tried too hard to make it good software, instead of just coding enough to try out the game ideas. Because at the end of the day, I need a working game to show others. Code is just one part.

My Simulator game is 2 years into development and there's probably 2-3 years left. So I decided to start a non-serious, smaller spin off this week with the intent of launching in 3 months, then resume my simulator game after that. Turns out I spent 8h sculpting the protagonist monster, 8h retopologing (and then I decided to try Quad Remesher and in 2 minutes it did a better retopology than my 8h of manual work), and 4h texturing and adjustments. And it's not animated yet. I guess my "smaller" spin off is also going to take a long time. Anyway I think if I tried the same as you and did it in pixel art it would take me longer, since I find 2D MUCH harder and I obsess over small details. But in my case I find a lot of pleasure in doing these things in Blender (I've been a professional software dev for 25+ years, so Blender is my "safe place" to relax), but yeah the amount of skills required for a 3D game is INSANE.

this video is awesome, it's good to hear other's journey, from the awesome highs of their journey to the struggling low of their journey, but overall learning to keep pushing expanding their experience by making smaller games, learning from others. thanks chap.c

Hey, good advice. I'm approaching this early burnout in a slightly different way, and it's probably not the right way, but so far I'm managing and will switch it up once I feel like I'm sinking. I've had an idea for some time - a game which I have no clue whether it could be successful or not, but I know it's kind of unique and is about something I enjoy. I have been working on it slowly. Sometimes too slowly. I have my ups and downs. Just don't ever give up... unless you find something else that you're passionate about. Just make sure it's enjoyable, else it is not worth it.

I fully agree that for your first game you should really make it as small as possible. It took me about 6 months with an average of 4 hours every single day to create 2/3 of a finished product. And even so, I feel like with my current knowledge I could restart the project completely and get most of it done in one day, and the rest of it done in under 3 to get back to that point. Why the drastic difference? Because I learned new systems and better ways to code things as I learned. As a perfectionist, I wanted to fully optimize my code. So when I learned these new systems, I kept redoing the same things over and over again trying to optimize it to be better. I took a break from the project and worked on some smaller stuff to still teach myself some stuff and avoid burnout. I think I'm ready to return to the project, and I'll probably start over from scratch to give myself a fresh start to optimize the code as I'm writing it

It's so warm and comforting to receive some comprehension, even when it's from a RU-vid vídeo ^^ I loved the turtle! It seems to allow some interesting mechanics!

Great video! Lotta good advice in there and the game looks cool!

Damn, the spending all you time in blender part hit deep. I just gave up on the notion of 3d 2 weeks ago just for this reason. I had spent 3 months in blender making models and forgot the whole reason I was there was to make a game.

Having fun is a must in game development ❤

this has given me even more motivation, good video man :)

The 2.5D game reminds me so much of Disney Hercules Action game, especially the maze forest. Another game with the same style of camera movement is The Adventures of Lomax. good luck in you're journey and don't get caught by scope creep.

Wow, great thoughts on remembering to have fun in the process of creating your game!! It is the part that motivates me the most, because it's nice that other creators think the same way ^-^ Good luck with you games, everyone!

Great video, thank you!

Enjoyed this video; i really like your presentation style... Well done! I can really relate to everything you said, and it was good to know about thst graph... Just knowing its a 'thing' and i wasnt the only one feeling like this is encouraging! Thank you!

I can't count the number of burnouts I have had in the past 8 years. Sometimes stepping away completely from development helps or working on some throw away project to learn something new.

This video helped me after a motivation dump. Really good video, thanks.

This all seems quite familiar, especially with the using of the Brackey's tutorial. Keep at it!

Very inspiring bro, keep it going!

Congrats. You have a prototype. I tried to make one for like half a year, but I didn't even make it to "mount stupid" since I just tried to do too many things at once: Learning C#, learning Unity, learning Blender, having no experience in programming or art (except for some really crappy paint doodles) and couldn't quite focus on one idea. Maybe I'll pick it up again at some point. Maybe with some help. Not everyone is cut out to be a jack-of-all-trades solo indie developer. Side note: It's not helpful to try and learn various genres at once. Stick to one, then maybe try out something else. Making a racing game, RTS, sidescroller, etc. may seem similar in terms of code, but they are very different.

Great insight on an indie game dev's journey. I'm a 7 year indie game dev, and there are still so much to learn, programming alone, I still can't do art at all. What I learned over the years as a solo dev, is that, stick to one engine, stick to one programming language, and stick to one project, and keep everything as low cost as possible(buy stock art/audio asset, use existing packages/libraries). More importantly, you need to make a game that stand out from competition. You'll probably make more money from one good game, than 10 average games, given the same amount of time.

This is a very down-to-earth, informative, and motivational video!

Superb video, topic and advice. THANKS!

great video, thanks!

Great video! I have been wanting to get into game development for years, but, have always felt so intimidated. I even bought some courses from GDQuest that look great, but, just never really started them. But, after watching this video, I think you have given me the push I need to actually do this! Thank you man, you earned a Subscriber today and I look forward to watching more of your videos

🤣👍 I grew up with a Tech-Nerd father, videogames (consoles, PCs), the internet (I *was there as the internet "went mainstream")... making my "own games," etc. I didn't go to school for game dev, but had friends who did (no, I went to school for culinary arts... 😅). None of that mattered... 😅 When I decided to *actually take Game Dev seriously (professionally and no longer as a hobby); I was smacked (hard) in the face with how clueless and ignorant I really was (still probably only barely grasping how little I know/ understand)... But who cares 😅 I still love being creative (and want to make *my dream game)... This video was hilarious and great! 👏 😆 let's all continue to stumble blindly towards the light! *Hang in there brothers, and keep the dreams alive!* - Edit: lol... when I started *my ideas were "cutting edge," by the time I finish I'll be lucky/ happy if people say "what a neat little *retro game." 😅🤣🤘🤪

I definitely experienced burnout. Just got back into game dev a few months ago after like a 2-year break! During that time I wanted to get back into game dev but every time I thought about it, it was just too daunting. One of the hardest parts of game dev is staying motivated!

U deserve a sub :)

Ive beat burnout with game jams or similar. If im feeling burnt out, i just take on a new mini project that i dont care about and just get done in a week or so... I find that finishing the mini project rekindles my love of my main project

I can relate a lot to what you are passing through, i had already 3 burnouts since i started to make games. My little 2 pennies : When we start, we need to make it a hobby, enjoy it, and MABE one day some money will come from it, but don't make it a goal. The goal is to love it! Also, take it as a marathon, not a sprint (there's a lot of implications to this simple sentense) 😊. Cheers, enjoy your game dev!!!

My main struggles are fighting feature creep. I've never had a small game idea in my life. Bite-sized games don't motivate me and I'm equally against downloading plugins made by others as i find trying to stitch them together or moulding them into my idea, harder than to make from scratch. (So I end up spending a long time programming my own camera, for instance) One advice for people however , find a means to iterate quickly. I switched from unreal to Godot so my focus was on adding instead of removing (so much pre-builtl/never going to use this stuff in unreal 😅) , it compiles quicker, the language is simpler, its less overwhelming etc...Maybe you want to do the opposite and kit-bash and use plugins to prototype.

Instead of working on your game, work on your signature systems so you can use them later on in a modular way to create your signature games. Once you have your locomotion system, your camera system, your combat system, your progression system, your health/damage system, your interaction system, and any other misc system you want to add, then you make the games. My other advice is to hire artists if you're not an artist; it's ok to delegate what you don't have skill to do yourself so you can focus on what no one can do for you, your signature systems, the core of what makes the game your brand, and not another.

Keep it up!

Can watch this stuff all day! And i love both prototypes. My favorite is the 2D but the 2.5D looks rly clean too and it works! We got to keep it real! And then one day in the elderly home we can hopefully laugh about it. “You know that time we made those silly games!” Wish you all the best of fortune on your game making endeavors good sir! Can’t wait to see this come into fruition

Kinda close to this atm, Great vid

My advice to not burnout is to buy a fckng course, do each thing at it's time. Don't try to hug the world. Don't Speed run tutorials, because youre not learning watching and doing it one time and them going to the next thing. You can say: "why spend money when it's free on RU-vid?" Because if you get a good teacher/professor it will be well structured and paced to not overload you (unless you play it at 2.5x, thats an error)

Thank you for good advices

Omg i feel sorry for solos. I have a very small team of three and even im experiencing burn out from just being the art director and doing all the assets, models and animations. I dunno how id cope with learning how to program on top of that, Good luck bro!

i could relate to alot in this video and i just want to share my thoughts about the topics that was talked about! I think gamedev is so enjoyable because of how many elements there are. i get bored of doing one thing over and over and some days i flat out cant do stuff, just a mental block. Ive had this problem forever, i mainly made music and i had such a hard time staying consistent. But with gamedev you have so many new things to do, so many things to cycle through. I find that so amazing. How i can model when i feel like it, or make music for level, write stories, make characters, look for textures while listening to music or try to figure out technical things. its almost endless. It feels scary too because you have to do some of these things eventually, but i find it really freeing if you just let go of having to make something perfect. I love making short little experiences, and i loved the example where he wanted to make an fps so he focused on that instead of getting sidetracked by graphics. Games might be the best medium to create experiences with, it doesnt even need to work as a game. I have played so many weird and random games full of bugs or bad textures but it didnt matter because the experience as a whole was really cool. I think being too much of a perfectionist in solo dev can be super dangerous. I honestly think that one of the most important things someone can do for themselves is to actively stop yourself from spending too much time getting minor specific things perfect, and instead embrace the bigger picture and the core of the experience you want to convey. I also think that the satisfaction of having a completed but not fully refined project beats working on "the perfect project" forever. Doing that also has a big chance of losing its identity and it has grown into this large burden that you cant really get rid of because youve invested so much time. And releasing it as it is will feel bad and dissapointing, and throwing it away will feel like wasted time. I have gone through this myself so often in music, and it helped so much to just turn the scope down so much.

I felt personally attacked by the intro. :P

Depending on workflows and knowledge of blender it can definitely speed up some 2D animation (Dead Cells is a great example). But speaking as someone who is just learning Blender, yeah, it's a LOT.

Also learning about Production, Marketing, Legalities of using existing tools software APIs, etc. But we do it because we love it or are mentally unwell (probably a combination of the two). Good video!

You could make your dream game, but you have to start step by step, it's like wanting to make your best drawing without knowing how to draw, so you try to draw step by step, having some period where you train on something else to return on your drawing and upgrade it.

Instructions unclear: i have now mastered all things. Now i ascend, a new plane of existence, leaving behind only this, the fruit of enlightened intellect. ... *Half finished souls like survival shooter with generational rogue like inheritance mechanisms based around haploid chomosomal inheritance.* As i ascend, you hear my distant voice echo: "Buy the soundtraaaaaack..."

Use free assets to reduce the scope. Also AI can help.

And Godot has functionality to enable collision I assume. Wait til you write you 3d game in RayLib (like I do). I implemented the basic collision in the first month of development. Couple of months later I still added stuff to it, because you need player vs walls, monsters vs walls, player vs monsters, projectiles vs walls, projectiles vs monsters, projectiles vs player, plus explosive projectiles and hitscans. Running into something from the side is not the same as falling on it as now you need to play landing sound. Collision objects can be boxes and spheres in any combination. Just last week, exactly 6 months into development, I was adding couple of simple moving platforms. Have barely pulled that off and was seriously considering dropping them. Monsters still don't interact with those moving platforms properly. And it's already clear that with complexity of the world going up I'll eventually have to optimize the entire system using BSP or Octree, which currently I know not much more than their names. And there are only AABBs not OBBs in my game (the fact and the words I learned accidentally on a forum). What you described about rigged Blender models is probably the same struggles, only squared. That's why I only use Doom-like sprites for now. :) Haven't even touched the lighting, and have no idea what that will amount to in OpenGL (that RayLib uses).

i had multiple burn outs. i dont work for weeks. i just spend my time playing other games and going out.

Also decided to start with pixel art, only to bump into a huge wall of Godot not supporting proper pixel perfect rendering, movement or collisions out of the box. I’d literally have to write my own engine or try to create one inside Godot just for a simple character moving on screen. It’s been only 12 hours and I already feel burnt out and frustrated.

I don't get why all indie games jump to pixel art when just hand-drawn art works as well and doesn't require to learn a whole new skill-set. I say this as a fledgling pixel artist, if you want to start out and use the simplest art style possible, just draw.

Great video! Very well presented, and very practical. And I love your pixel art turtle dude, he's adorable 😁. I've got a specific feeling and 'journey' that I've wanted to make into a game for a while, but I realised that it's completely unrealistic for me to think I could make it exactly like I want on my own, so I thought hard about the absolute minimum that would be required to get across at least the basic skeleton of what I want. And as important as the gameplay would have been, what I was left with wasn't actually a game at all. It would be a comic series. Tbh I doubt I'll even manage to complete that, but whatever, for now I'm working on the script for it because why not. At the same time, I'm also doing something that's actually within my current abilities... Game reviews on youtube. It's much easier to complain about someone else's game than make your own, after all 😅. I love analysing why certain elements of games make me feel certain things. Btw, I assume that gaming titanic was AI generated? Those controllers give me the heebie jeebies, lol

A buddy and I are working on a small scope game. But its not the gameplay or the art that's the problem. Its the setting options. I've been bashing my head against a wall to make a saving/loading function work. I think I am close to a solution. Tutorials give very basic function but don't explain more complex saving features. But yeah, the thing I learned is that you need to have a strong interface. We know the game isn't going to be a block buster, but we do want it to have bare minimum creature comforts.

I think people put too much stock into being a jack of all trades (master of none) solo dev. If it takes you two years to make a game, your cost of living for that time is the cost of development. If you budget $5k or $10k for outsourcing the things you aren't passionate about, you will wind up cutting development time in half (at least), have a better quality game, and likely even more revenue with better reviews.

omg make a short with that intro you'll go viral 😆

I feel like I go through this almost daily lmao. So fun.

0:25 🎵 ASSIGN A GROUP OF VERTICES 🎵💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺

thank you 😊😊💜💜

That’s me. I’m burning out with blender trying to animate a human the way I need you a game project. Ever tutorial I find is using all these editors and stuff and I can’t narrow it down to a specific pathway.

Me: working on my grand magnum opus RPG game for almost 20 years with no workable demo after refactoring and switching frameworks (Stardew Valley dev finishes in just a few years) Me: (cries) 😭

As someone considering making a solo game this video is well timed. I already have some 3d art skills (as a hobby) but never tried 2d art, so the idea of a 2d prototype sounds even more intimidating. But I also don't want to be the noob who thinks the advice doesn't apply to him. My plan right now is to learn some coding by cloning the classics - like pong or space invaders.

Easy: one day of dev, two days of sustained masturbation, one day of fasting. I've been doing this for 15 years and I have never once burned out or shipped a game. Win win win.

duude your 2.5D engine looks promising i can say that, as a damn clickteam developer with my game in beta demo i wish i could switch to godot, but i gotta finish my current 2d platformer first, and it sucks

great video, but I am farther along than you and still feel teh valley of dispair loll. eventually burnout just happens. small wins, violent optimism is MANDATORY!

I do programming for pay the bill, I do Bender as hobby for years and it's only touch the surface. I think, I can combine 2 things to make some game (just for fun), then I learn, it very hard to archive this! And yes, I still want to do this, hope I don't burn out (too fast)

No I won't 😭. I've been at this for over 3 years.

and don't forget, the returns of doing all these things is a gamble for most of us 😂

We call those viewing boxes, "shadowboxes" where I am.

Such a warm video, thanks.

Don't forget to mention SOUND 😳

You see my only problem is texturing and rigging, but each i can master soon enough.

28 seconds and I say THINK FOR YOUSELVES and man up . Soz but I'm continuing this vid

I'm pondering wether to do 3D or not for my next title. Currently making a fairly wishlisted 2d pixel art game, so I feel I have 2D down. Do you think crocotile3D is a good idea for simple 3D, or is blender just plain better? Basically what I want to do is reuse my current assets, and having them feel "new" by reusing them in 3D.

Oh man I know this all too well..... I start development as a level designer, code a bit I feel good, post screen shots or vids for family and friends to see and then I just.... Stop ... Silence.. bc I burned out..

This game looks hecking cute.

liked your video.

Something nice.

keep going

For me I’ve been stuck trying to choose foss programs for game dev. I chose my game engine(Godot 4) and music software(Beepbox), but art is kind of a road block. I want to do pixel art, so I’m stuck between Pixelorama, Libresprite, and Piskel. Piskel is easily accessible, but it’s hard for me to use. Mainly because I used to use an Aesprite alternative called Resprite (It wasn’t for game dev at the time, I just thought it would be cool to try out. It’s inconvenient to use now since it’s mainly for mobile devices). Because of this I’m considering using Libresprite, though I’m concerned about how safe it is to use Libresprite. It may just be my extreme paranoia, but I can’t find that many videos or information about it. I know Pixelorama was made with Godot, so it might be easy for me to use but idk. If Libresprite is fine and I’m just paranoid, I’d like to use that. Again me using Resprite really messed me up with using these kinds of softwares. Thanks if anyone decides to answer!

Well it's not hard just to make small games that can't be sell. It's another matter when you have to make the commercial viable game even the small one. Many people are either overachieving or straight up lying about their productions, so it's set the gamers expectation to be a bit too high. Luckily for us, Bright Memory actually set the expectations lower than how Stardew Valley set. This kinda give us some rooms to scale down our projects and realistically able to finish a game that could be sell.

I can't even start projects. I'm a certified failure

Something nice :)

Actually I'm the opposite I would rather to make character in blender and 3d model more than just coding in godot not undrestanding a single thing, my game was story based in the first place I had no passion for the gameplay so yeah maybe I should stick to the animations and make it a animated series

I don't think the problem is learning a lot of stuff. The problem is not seeing how the workload scales. I can do modeling and texturing and animating, sure. But can I make ten animated characters for a game? How long would that take? That I was the trap I fell into several times. Learning is easy and fun! but you need to estimate the time it takes for each small task and see how it adds up

You shared some really good points, I've heard using plug-ins where ever possible is a must to speeding up the indie dev production. What are your thoughts on using plug-ins?

im not gona lie. burnouut for me is hard because i always have and still do love learning the new things like garoud shading etc... but the modeling ight i can relate their.

something nice

Jack of all trades, master of none, but often times better than a master of one. It's a tough career choice, but I wouldn't have it any other way.