Examples of games developed by a single developer? | Hacker News Reader

Examples of games developed by a single developer?

29 pointswayne_skylar38 comments

I dabbled in gamedev in college and have been working as an engineer for the past 15 years. I am interested in building a game as a hobby / side project. I was wondering if anyone here could give me examples of simple yet fun games that would help with inspiration.

One example I can think of off the top of my head would be A Dark Room[1] But I'm not looking to copy it.

Anyone have any examples?

1. https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/

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Rollercoaster Tycoon - By Chris Sawyer. 99% written in x86 assembly. Imho, the most impressive example of a game of its magnitude, by a single dev.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_(video_ga...

http://www.chrissawyergames.com/faq1.htm

The Digital Antiquarian had a thoroughly interesting article on Chris Sawyer and his work not too long ago:

https://www.filfre.net/2020/10/transport-tycoon/

Yes Rollercoaster Tycoon was my sh*t

I definitely remember playing this game when I was little. Definitely loved

Stardew Valley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardew_Valley

Undertale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertale

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_(video_game)

the ports are done by different people as well as the sound track.

Why do you want to do this all by yourself? I'd recommend to use whatever is useful, affordable and makes it more fun!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Story is one of the better-known examples.

> It was developed over five years by Japanese developer Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya in his free time.

And if you like this genre, Iconoclasts https://store.steampowered.com/app/393520/Iconoclasts/

Cave Sorry is a wonderful pearl of a game.

Infiniminer is something that comes to mind - which was the base used for Minecraft, I think.

While we're in the Realm of voxel-based games, there's Minetest, which is open Source and written in C++ and extendable by Lua.

Iirc, braid was also developed solely by one person, although he did commision the art.

But in general, the "big game made by a single person" is a bit of a myth. Sure, it does exist, but many of those people have either had help from others, or were actually working in a small team.

A lot of it is just marketing talk.

I've had this repo starred on GitHub for a while. Sadly it doesn't seem to have been updated, but it's a good start: https://github.com/Yonaba/awesome-one-person-games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Hike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flappy_Bird

I've linked this up on HN before, but if you haven't seen it, Lucas Pope's dev log for Return of the Obra Dinn is epic. You really get to see the daily progress and creative exploration ;)

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.0

Also, if anyone is looking for funding their solo projects, investigate Web3 Grants and Web Monetization APIs like Coil. Best of Luck!

https://www.notion.so/Gaming-Guild-cd674c92bf9f4bd3ac0a736ba...

Prince of Persia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_g...

Arstechnica has a great interview with Jordan Mechner, the creator of this game. A true technical and artistic wizard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0VfmXKq54&ab_channel=ArsTe...

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985-19... don't forget to mention the book that details how he did it too! It's an amazing book even if you've never played the game.

One I remember fondly is Soldat [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldat_(video_game)

Axiom Verge

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_Verge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touhou_Project

> Since 1995, the team's member, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, has independently developed programming, graphics, writing, and music for the series, self-publishing 22 main titles as of August 2019.

Any number of casual indie mobile games would fit the bill. Pick a platform and come up with some simple game mechanic and backstory that seems like it would be fun. Just don't expect to make a lot of money or get only positive support, doing it for fun/learning and anything else is bonus is a good mindset.

I think the good thing about a mobile game is you can tell your friends (or anyone you meet) to find the game in the store and try it, right then and there. People often have bits of free time on their phone (when bored with the usual). On a computer, they'll be somewhere with many more obligations or distractions.

Well, I have been working on a game for a few months. I posted an extremely early build for feedback here and have gotten some really helpful feedback. It’s a third person adventure game and if you play it, please fill out the survey linked at the end:

https://hertzrat.itch.io/a-few-nights-room-and-board

Admittedly, it’s only 95% solo developed: my talented wife has begun doing some level design.

Cave Story comes to mind.

One dude did all the programming and art.

I wouldn't put too much weight on doing it alone though. I've hired various artists and contractors to assist in my game development. I'm also very liberal with buying Unity assets.

The Last Tree was made by one guy and is full of Unity Asset store art.

The only people who will even notice are other developers.

Honestly using Unity assets as a foundation has made me a much better developer. I'm always finding tricks I didn't know

Aces wild is a blast: https://store.steampowered.com/app/269230/Aces_Wild_Manic_Br...

Ghost of a tale is beautiful too. The most famous one is braid though

I made games when I was 13 years old. They are for Windows 98 and in German, but they should still be playable nowadays: http://www.benibela.de/games_en.html

Chronicon: http://www.subworldgames.com/chronicon/

For fans of Diablo/Grim Dawn/ARPGs. Really impressive effort by a solo dev.

Seconding this. Great game. My favorite part is the xp modifier you get from really long kill streaks, something that exists in many games (like diablo) but really adds a fun twist to the grindy combat.

I believe CubeWorld was mainly developed by one guy and eventually his wife helped out:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_World

Battle royale tycoon was a solo project by a youtuber who goes by the name Code Monkey. He has some videos and gamasutra articles talking about the revenue and development process. Iirc, 105k revenue and 95k lines of code?

Mashinky https://store.steampowered.com/app/598960/Mashinky/

Just the individual-developer games that I've actually played:

Minecraft. Stardew Valley. Braid. Fez. Cave Story. Roller Coaster Tycoon. Axiom Verge. Streets of Rogue. Space Empires.

https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/about/

Minecraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft

Equilinox is great, and has some dev vlogs on YouTube https://equilinox.com/

Transcendence: https://transcendence.kronosaur.com/

I made Swoopy Boi on my own besides UI design. http://swoopyboigame.com

Few years ago my brother threw a beer on my iPhone in an Amsterdam bar. The poor thing didn't like the Dutch brew as much as I do: it died. While waiting for a new phone to arrive, I used an old one that couldn't do anything but texting, calling and... Snake! I decided to try and develop an accurate remake myself - it changed my live! I wrote a post detailing much of the experience, 30M downloads and counting: https://willem.com/blog/2018-02-21_updating-snake-97/

TLDR: try and build your own game - it’s fun, you’ll learn a lot and it can change your life!

Thanks for the link! Goes to show that even the simplest apps are never done.

Baba is you, I think.

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