It all started with a game jam I did in April 2020. I enjoyed the result. And it kept popping back in my mind.
November 24th I picked it up again, full-time. I plublished One Way Dungeon last friday. So it was about five and a half month work. While I'm a professional (backend) software developer, and have played around with game dev, I never worked on and finished a game.
Last weekend I shared it with a small group of people (just to check everything was OK on their devices and with downloading it from Google Play.) And yesterday I started sharing it on the internet.
I don't have any concrete numbers to share. Google's reports are still a couple of days late. And I predict a spike on users starting yesterday.
I'm going back to a normal job because:
- I am unemployed. I have some savings but I don't want to spend more than I already have.
- I don't predict One Way Dungeon to generate enough income to keep me working on it indefinitely. I might be wrong. But competition in mobile gaming is fierce!
- I'm kinda missing working on backend. And working with people.
If possible I recommend applying for work at a mobile game company. Even as a backend dev you can learn a lot. There's a ton of interesting stuff to learn about game design, marketing, analytics, ads vs iap, etc.
I'm inclined to think this was a labor of love, not profit.
There are people out there who quit their jobs to go backpacking on arduous trails for 5 months. It's long, hard work, but they do it for the other joys that come with the experience. And they do it all with the expectation of returning back to working life--not on cashing out. I don't see how what OP did is any different, other than it being a digital journey rather than a physical one.
Cool, I just ask because I have similar aspirations and never was able to pull the trigger to quit out of fear of losing income/falling behind financially.
November 24th I picked it up again, full-time. I plublished One Way Dungeon last friday. So it was about five and a half month work. While I'm a professional (backend) software developer, and have played around with game dev, I never worked on and finished a game.
Last weekend I shared it with a small group of people (just to check everything was OK on their devices and with downloading it from Google Play.) And yesterday I started sharing it on the internet.
I don't have any concrete numbers to share. Google's reports are still a couple of days late. And I predict a spike on users starting yesterday.
I'm going back to a normal job because:
- I am unemployed. I have some savings but I don't want to spend more than I already have.
- I don't predict One Way Dungeon to generate enough income to keep me working on it indefinitely. I might be wrong. But competition in mobile gaming is fierce!
- I'm kinda missing working on backend. And working with people.