- This "game" is a mess -
Steampunk Brand X (A working title that never got replaced though many other names were pitched) is an example of what happens when a solo developer with no prior development experience spends three years working on a game without setting a clear scope, beginning with fundamentals, or adequately playtesting and taking feedback. It was baby's first magnum opus.
Ego Overcame Reason.
Nothing was finished properly before the next idea became the primary focus of development.
- The framerate wasn't sorted out.
- The HUD was built before the screen resolution or art style were clearly defined.
- Drag and drop was mixed with programming.
- There's inconsistencies galore to the art-style.
- The controls are a catastrophe
- Everything "feels" off, sluggish, delayed, or inconsistent
- Animations rarely follow any principles of good animation
- There's no beginning, middle, end, introduction, or tutorial
- So what got this started? -
Sunless Sea coming to Steam Greenlight in 2014. It was a beautiful narrative game about sailing a fictional underground ocean recently posted to Steam Greenlight, the only problem to me was that I didn't enjoy reading. I wanted engaging gameplay. I wanted the world brought to life with emergent gameplay instead of multiple-choice narratives. I wanted Dishonored in the world of Sunless Sea but I didn't know how to even begin making a 3D game so I went with 2D and drew inspiration from games like Thief, Guns of Icarus, Sid Meiers Pirates, Skyrim, Minecraft, and various platformers.
I wanted to follow Failbetter's lead to Steam Greenlight and release my own work. I wanted to run a financially viable game development business rather than take a traditional career path.
Steampunk Brand X was going to be a rags-to-riches air piracy game about a gentleman saddled with his fathers debt given 30 days to pay it off by any means necessary. It was going to be an open world RPG with real-time time mechanics that had multiple characters following their own paths with their own goals that would change the world so that you felt like a single person in a world that's already alive. You could become a pirate and take down an empire or side with an empire and wipe out the pirates, both sides would have strong and well written characters with moral gray area rather than "Good vs bad" and you were just a pawn trying to survive in a world bigger than you.
There would be sidequests, mansions to loot using stealth mechanics, rich businessmen to work for by doing grunt work, airships to plunder in steampunk sky combat, resource trading, port takeovers, a stock market, and a newspaper that reported daily on the major events (Which may even feature your own actions if they were impactful enough!)
There was complex lore, faction politics, competing philosophies, sword combat, diving, fishing, nightmares, assassins, thieves, pirates, soldiers, moon phases, tides, steam pipes with tensity mechanics, boarding, crew management, ballroom dancing, romance, vehicle sections, emergent gameplay, an aquarium to keep pets, ship upgrades, home decorating- it was all too much.
It felt like I had infinite time and because I felt capable of doing anything, it only made sense to say "YES!" to every idea that crossed my mind and if anything didn't work I could just "iron-it-out" later, change it, or remove it.
No harm done, right?
Wrong.
Ideas are not valuable without excellent execution.
I had created a time sucking toybox without defining development milestones and then expected that an entirely finished product would just instantly gain huge levels of fame and acclaim without doing any marketing whatsoever. My expectations were completely at odds with reality.
- So what happened? -
After approximately three years of development work I knew I needed to finally address core mechanics like screen formatting and save systems. So I started a new absolutely tiny game that would be done in two weeks; The Caribbean Sail.
Fast forward two months and The Caribbean Sail took over as my main project, the community that enjoyed the game supported it and me. I used the profits to host the website, upgrade my computer, buy my first car, and save for everything I would need to expand Victorian Clambake later on.
There was a lot of conversation over the years with my friends about what would happen to Steampunk Brand X but with experience comes perspective. Every time I looked back at Brand X the more flawed it became in my eyes until I couldn't stand it and completely dropped it in 2019.
There's no longer any desire in me to pick up development but I wanted to share my story as a warning and showcase a large portion of what eventually lead to my professional career as a developer... even though it's rough story to tell.
- Conclusion -
It may seem like I'm treating a clearly unfinished project unfairly but it would have never been finished due to the lack of development strategy. There was no solid development cycle. There was no minimum viable product. There was no target audience beyond "Steampunks" and my own friends.
Could it be salvaged? Maybe. If playing it didn't churn my stomach, if it wasn't so utterly bogged down with poor decisions and low quality work, if I started from scratch only taking a few good ideas and cut out heaps of ancillary features.
As it stands, it's not a fun game made well nor is it emotionally provacative.
Looking back now? The result was a disasterpiece but I don't allow myself to see it all as a waste of time. I learned nearly every rookie indie lesson the hard way from this endeavor and the dedication to this project taught me how focus and effort result in high quality results.
I've also learned the importance of downscaling and focusing on small well made experiences rather than sprawling mountains of garbage.
I hope you learned something from my mistakes and if you do try to play the game, I hope you enjoy it.