Hey HN<p>3 years ago I started working on a game called Moonman -- a procedurally-generated adventure game.<p>I posted here two years ago with my blog entry "The Last 2 Years" ( http://bp.io/post/1501 ). 18 months later and I'm still working on the game by myself. I'm now in my final days of a Kickstarter campaign aimed to help fund one more year before the public release ( http://kck.st/1DElnw3 ) and I'm happily on track to reach the goal.<p>It's taken me 3 years of solid development before I felt comfortable to launch a Kickstarter, and I'm excited to be able to finally hire an additional person to work on my game. The game will take one more year before a public release and then probably another year after that to fix bugs, do the console ports, etc. Here's a visual history of the last 3 years ( http://imgur.com/a/NnEmN ).<p>I never would have thought I would be working on one game for 5 years, but I understand now that these things take time. Instead of thinking of it as one long project, it helps to think of it as a series of prototypes -- each one building on from the last and getting better along the way. After a few grim periods of uncertainty and depression, I'm finally feeling pretty proud of where it is going.<p>The best thing about this whole Kickstarter campaign is the great support from the whole gamedev community. I've been tweeted by Notch, chatted briefly to Vlambeer, received a shout-out from Ron Gilbert, and have spoken to many other awesome gamedevs.<p>There are a lot of solo gamedevs out there, and I'm sure there are also a lot of solo start-ups. If you've been working alone for years on something and are unsure about its future then I hope my little story assures you that long-term persistence can pay off. I've still got a long way to go but excited to enter this next stage in my gamedev career.
Was linked to this a few days ago. Good luck with the funding campaign, looks like you’re nearly there!<p>I’ve been getting into gamedev in my spare time recently and have been reading a lot of devlogs to learn a bit more about the process solo gamedevs in particular go through. Out of curiosity how have you found the past few years to be, working on this full-time while trying to provide a decent living for yourself?