Failure Story of the Drunken Shotgun

I was planning my future to first get great at Software development, then switch to game development once I got the skills.<p>During that time I visited a few indie game conferences. I realised quite quickly how underfunded and overworked everyone was, trying to bootstrap companies on subsidies. Not with the intention to become the next unicorn, but just for the love of games. Nothing wrong with that, but I didn&#x27;t seem entirely healthy. At least most artists still understand the reality that they are doing it for themselves. most gamedevs make games for other to play, that naivety is quite toxic.<p>Perhaps once I&#x27;m retired Ill dust off Unity and start create games that I want to create. Perhaps other enjoy them but hopefully not.<p>Looking at this post-mortem, think the money and investment was worth it for the creator. 4k and 6 months is not that much for the reality check and experience he got from it. Better value then most art or game dev schools.

During a gold rush, sell shovels. Or be a for-hire artist when everyone makes mobile games.

This is quite a confusing post mortem because the overriding failure happened before the project even began. Even a basic understanding of the mobile market would lead you to conclude that only have a few thousand dollars budget is only going to lead to you spending far more than you make. This looms over the entire thing despite the other problems with the project.

It&#x27;s a very interesting story.<p>Not just a mere failure, but a total wipeout.<p>Extremely simple games have succeeded before, eg Flappy Bird, as the author mentioned, so what went wrong here?<p>Maybe gameplay wasn&#x27;t satisfying enough, due to a few annoying glitches and obstacles mentioned in the article, and probably the marketing was too weak?

&gt;&gt; Drunk Shotgun is a top-down mobile game where you control a character with a shotgun, who is constantly spinning and cannot stop because he&#x27;s just too drunk. You tap the screen to shoot the shotgun to damage goblins coming at you and to move around the arena. Character himself cannot move freely due to his condition, but the shotgun recoil moves him allowing you to dodge attacks, gather power ups and move through the arena to get a tactical advantage. You can also tap&amp;hold to engage bullet time allowing you to time your shot precisely and analyze the situation. Bullet time is not infinite and is replenished by defeating enemies. After defeating 99 goblins you face the final boss.<p>Pah. Another game that legitimises the perpetration of acts of violence against innocent goblins. In all honesty, this has gotta stop! Future generations will look down upon people of present times for deriving a sick pleasure by the shedging of goblin blood.<p>End violence against goblins in gaming!

This strikes me as the kind of game that would have done well in the Flash market around 2005 on desktop browsers, but doesn&#x27;t really work well with the extremely poor input methods available on mobile devices.

I wonder if the theme of the game was also a barrier. Alcohol and guns don&#x27;t mix so just the title alone may have kept people from checking it out.

Only spent 4k? Add in your time at your typical hourly rate and despair. 4k is basically nothing in game development.