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by squibbles 2016 days ago
Speaking from many, many years of experience:

Cash is king. Nothing is more important than cash flow. A runway is not a development budget -- it is a loan in the form of opportunity cost. Always look for income at all times. And never, ever borrow money for the project.

Regarding people, keep active contacts with other people. Do not shelter behind closed doors. The world moves quickly, and if your team withdraws into its own bubble for 12 months, when you emerge you will find the world to be very different.

Regarding tech, Unity will work better than Unreal because a small team needs to reduce technical overhead as much as possible.

Regarding gameplay, favor simplicity over complexity.

Regarding art, maintain a cohesive and unique style across all elements of design.

Regarding players, start looking for them from day 1. It takes a long time and a lot of work to build a following. And remember, the players are not your customers -- they are your new boss.
2 comments
MeinBlutIstBlau 2016 days ago
As a just average Joe gamer, art style makes or breaks a game. If you pick a style, stay with it. Indie games like stardew, skullgirls, don't starve, papers please, punch club, and darkest dungeon all proved graphics don't sell games, especially on mobile. If anything word of mouth has probably helped most of those. But mostly, the art style is visually appealing and doesn't look like lazy garbage.
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jmiskovic 2016 days ago
More actionable, the choice of colors and their combinations is the key ingredient for cohesive and tight art direction. Pixel art, vector art, low-poly 3D - they all rely more on good colors than on shapes.

It's quite hard to pick each color from color picker wheel and ending up with something decent. Much better approach is to use pre-assembled palettes like ones on lospec.com/palette-list collection. My favorite versatile palette is edg32, but others will work better for certain moods. Working with more than 30-is colors requires experience and patience.

These guidelines can help to build something that catches attention, and assets tend to be simpler and easier to iterate on.

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tomcam 2014 days ago
All sound advice, from what I can tell.

Regarding your profile, when I read it I feel like I am already in the middle of a game.

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