Any unity games made by one person?

just trying to kill my curiosity here, i found out many games were made by one person
but mostly in godot or game maker, is there any unity games made by one person?

 

There are tons of games made by a single developer. I don't have the time to go digging endlessly but here's an example of one that came to my mind immediately after reading your post.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/now-released-eastshade-a-game-about-exploration.251469/

 

Eastshade was largely but not entirely one man show. Not that there is special prize for doing things alone anyway.

but for sake of argument, I say it's a silly notion to ever say any game is one man show. Everything we do is built on the backs of giants, and any time you google a problem to find an answer you are relying on somebody else.

Semantics, I know, but I just want to impress the point that, even if you the most reclusive introvert, forget working alone. Look to leverage the strength of others whenever possible, and try to always give credit where it's due. Good karma come around to you that way.

 

Thats a good point - most one man shows rely on freelancers or third party work.

Even if you skip using an engine like Unity, very very few projects have no freelancers or royalty free content. Even solo, you are working with a number of others one way or another.

There are just too many separate disciplines involved. Art, programming, sound, illustration, etc. Very few can operate every aspect, and if they can they need to aggressively downscope.

 

Banished, off the top of my mind.

Also, my game.. once i decide to actually finish it that is..

 

Sadly, not made with Unity. It uses its own engine written from scratch using C++.

Unturned and No Heroes (development is currently put on hold).

 

I have a friend that is working on a game using the XDA framework. He does everything himself from code to art (pixelart) to sound.. Though not released and no blog sadly.

Wasnt Minecraft a one man show including engine?

 

Oh really, i was told it was a unity game back when ut came out..

Yeah, RCT 1 &2 too(execpt for the music i belive), but the op asked about unity games

 

Yeah I know, but one can argue you have the unity team in your back and its impossible for it to be a one man team. Though if you use XDA or other closer to metal APIs you have the API team backing you so it's basicly impossible being a one man team then.

A more fair definition is that you are a one man team which uses engines and assets from others.

 

I would expect tons of puzzles and small 2d platformers, are one person show. That specially having Unity in mind.

Other larger 'single handed' games, mostly would require previous solid game dev experience. That including none Unity Minecraft and flappy birds.

However, if we going to argue, if used tool should be treated as 'one' or not one person show, same could apply to used hardware, or even used chair you are sitting on, if to be pedantic.

When I see relevant 'one man show' term, I consider, if person is able to handle integration and execution of all available tools. Saying that, I would exclude cases, where person hires directly other dev/artist, for duration of the project, to develop resources just for that project. But buying ready assets would be fine.

Sure, that leave a bit vauge, weather outsourcing for short duration, can be classified or not, as 'one man show'.

 

And it is already very-very-very far from the metal.

I find this notion a false one myself too. It's hard to tell when you're a true one-man (or woman) show and when you're not. Even if you do everything in C++ from scratch you have a lot of things between your application and the computer under it which made by a ton of very clever people. So whatever, it is arbitrary.

 

How do you draw the line between freelancers and third party assets though?

I'm actually doing a solo project, but I'm also leaning hard enough into freelancers that I don't think I could consider it really a solo effort anymore.

 

Its meta discussion really, but if they are not part of the team it's still a one man team right

 

Just search this has been asked many times before. There are many awesome games that have been made by one person (to varying degrees depending on exactly how you classify the use of assets, music, etc).

 

Does it need to be finished and released?

 

I'm not sure what "made by one person" means. The game I posted on Steam a couple years ago was made all by myself, but includes 3rd party publicly available assets. The game I am working on now I am making by myself, except I contracted for thousands of $ for custom models, and I also use a few 3rd party assets, and audio I have licensed. Is that "made by one person"? Not sure.

 

Anyone here saying "if you used third party access, it's not a one person team" better be prepared to admit that engines and APIs are also third party assets.

The only logical conclusion from the statement ends up being "actually, there's no such thing as a one man game if you REALLY think about it" which is trite and boring. You know it's not the point.

 

I donno, I always thought of myself as a solo dev for most of my work - but this really came down to not spending huge amounts of money. Once you're spending like 10k+ on freelancers and the like, I donno quite how you can consider yourself being a solo.

There's really not that much difference between freelancers and employees at some point.

 

In my view, if you make more than 70% of your content alone you can easily consider yourself a solo developer.

There isn't a strict rule but if you are working on your own on all the marketing, social media, the game itself but help yourself with some assets to cut down development time, you're solo.

When you buy assets, you pay for them with money you have earned by giving up your time. Besides, you still have to incorporate them to work for your game.

As long as the assets don't make up for more than 50% of your game and you didn't employ someone to do all the marketing for you, you are still pretty much working solo...

 

Is Hamburger Helper a homemade meal if I add in siracha and a pinch of fresh parsley?

 

How do you measure the percentage, though?

 

Well there isn't a direct measurement so it's all just a rough estimation, but you can refer to the rest of my previous post which explains what I think makes you solo and what doesn't

 

I made two games alone with Unity (link below). Of course that doesn't mean that I made everything from scratch, I used a lot of store assets. Recently I learned basic 3D modelling and texturing but I'll probably still use the store for a lot of stuff in the future.

 

Its all super meta, but I really think 'solo' or not comes down to how much money (or equity) you're spending on others work. Once you're hiring people for non trivial amounts of work, the line gets increasingly blurry.

My current project, I would no longer be comfortable calling a solo effort. I have enough freelance work being produced that its really not accurate. Although I'm sure some would still claim they were operating solo in the same spot.

 

I'm pretty sure that the main reason why solo devs (including myself) choose to work on projects alone is because of all the risk that's involved. Too often you read stories about the partner stealing the project, or leaving the project, or some monetary or division-of-labor or direction-of-vision argument. It's finding that level of trust and jelling with your teammate(s) that is the most difficult hurtle to jump. Basically, the mentality is, "nobody is as invested in my game as I am, so I wouldn't force anyone else to help me with it, if they're not fully invested in it."

 

Ya i agree i just mean to break mindset that you are alone. Need to always think how you can leverage others skill knowledge and experience. Not to imply direct partnership tho.

Over and over i see developers and artist working so hard to solge problem.already been solved a thousamd times. This is especially wasteful if its trivial technical issue that wont solve the big qiestions yoylu need to answer first

 

This sort of thing has happened with every collaboration that I've worked on in the past. Everyone always thinks that they're super-excited and dedicated to the project. That only lasts a month or two and then no one has time for it anymore. It's difficult to find people who are willing to collaborate for an extended period of time and a game takes a significant amount of time and effort to make.

 

This happens a lot.
I myself got super excited with a friend to work on some game ideas but realised I wasn't too invested into it at the time.
So we decided to go about our lives instead of trying to make work, something that would fall apart in a month and instead, I went solo and once I get the ball rolling I will possibly get them involved later.

 

And that's why @BIGTIMEMASTER's and @frosted's success is so great. Not because they finished the project, but they were able to work through their own challenges and trust each other to get to the end. And that's pretty cool. A lot of solo devs would love to collaborate, but more minds means more management.

 

Lol, sadly we split at post release and are currently not speaking to each other. We're unable to release a promised update because communication is impossible at this point. The entire thing was a trainwreck of poor communication and differing objectives. We can't even agree on how to end the 'business' relationship despite having a contract that outlines how we should do so. The whole thing is kinda absurd.

I don't want to argue with BTM on forums or air dirty laundry but things did not end well. I hope this post is pretty neutral.

 

Mission still got accomplished

 

Not in my opinion, we left loose ends because of petty personal issues and lied to our customer base.

But hopefully we can agree to not really dig into this here.

At the end of the day, BTM and I had personal issues that we could not overcome, and left the project in an unfinished state because of those personal issues. Without going into details, I hope we can both agree on that.

 

Except its not we. I got hundreds of hours work sittimg there. Issue was you lost interest because, like others are sayimg here, you didmt get the immediate positive feedhack you wanted. Could have.made more money last several months, but quit too soon.

There is almost double tje amount of game content sitting there waiting to be published. Been sitting there for a long time.

Have to have a growth mentality when starting out, not get rich quick.

Very common pitfall. I even made one of the themes of the game keeping faith and dticking with the mission.

 

My goal with TBHC was different from yours. Fundamentally we were approaching TBHC from different directions. You wanted to make the best game you could, I wanted to release something, anything and learn about the full release cycle.

You became far more invested in the project than I was.

In my defense, up front, in the very beginning, I thought I made my goals clear, in that we would release the project at x date regardless of the state. That we would not deviate from the plan, regardless of what came up.

My goal was not to make TBHC the best game it possibly could be, my goal was to release a product in x amount of time. Your goal became to make TBHC the best it possibly could be, and you resented me for not sharing your goal.

I was never trying to "get rich quick" - my goal was to use TBHC as a learning experience and move on.

 

All you have to do is look at results. I have two complete campaigns sitting there ready to go. I get the work done no matter what. Doesnt mater if i like u or the game or if we make money or not. The work got done.

If you did what you planned and nothing more, that is cool. But i cant wait around months for you to decide of the thing is worth working on or not. You promised content hy august. I produced all of it and its sitting there. Months later you cant expect me to drop what i am doing because now you finally come around and se tje light.

 

Dude, you blocked me from discord and announced on the game forum that we wouldn't be releasing our promised update.

What was I supposed to do? Release your work after you announced we wouldn't be releasing the update and blocking me on discord??

I think I tried to get in touch with you about 2 or 3 times after to figure out what we should do with the outstanding stuff and its been a disaster each time.

 

What have I done?

 

I'll bet this pretty common in game development too. One time, I made a dinky freeware game in Gamemaker with 4 levels. You can't get to them in the build, but there are actually 6 more half-finished levels in there too. The final game had less than half of the content that I had planned, but one day I decide that I just couldn't work on it anymore.

 

It is common. In fact, if this isn't the case, then you're doing gamedev* wrong. Concepts/ideas aside, the project could end up with plenty of unused artwork, code, tools, and even the main project will have craploads of additional work that isn't visible to the player. Most devs end up having to redo their systems multiple times because of one reason or another. And that's all normal.

I'm talking commercial, or at least published projects

 

Thats not the case here guys. This is post release content i made, ready to be published. Th8e issue was i didnt want to do business with some very shady publishers, which triggered a meltdown with my partner who had, up to that point, quit working on the game entirely (without telling me).

Nevermind the toxic communication, there is simply no reason to try to force an unreliable person into heing reliable if they are beyond age of 16. Its a waste of time.

Good thing is that i did the work of making a contract thst protects our work. It was a red flag that my partner had some reluctance in making a contract, but i chose to ignore because i knew we could at least get a published game ouy the door in 1 month time. We did, so calculsted risk payed off.

My recommendation for collaboration is thst defining your terms of work in a contract should be first thing you do. If partner is laxadaisical about this it is good sign that they do not take their own time serkous. If they dont take thwir time serious, they def wont respect yours

 

@BIGTIMEMASTER
Look, after we had the meltdown, you immediately went to the forum and posted that we were not going to be delivering the promised update.

Should I have released your work without your consent after you declared we wouldn't release it?

Further, yesterday, when I was asking you if you were done with it or if you wanted to do more work on it, when you refused to clearly answer and instead threw passive aggressive digs at me, wtf should I do next?

 

This is why i cut communications. No time for soap opera drama.

 

I'm just trying to make you look at things bigger than "frosted bad. quit on me." Look at things from my perspective for a moment, all I want out of this is to get some kind of update out without drama. But its impossible.

 

@BIGTIMEMASTER @frosted It's none of my business and I'm sorry for even say something, but please don't fight because of this. Sometimes, things don't go as planned and that's okay... Different opinions? Sure, can happen! Clearly both of you made some mistakes along the way, but sh*t happens.

Get yourself together and talk to each other - neutrally. (Or i'll kick yo a** ). We game devs need to stick together!

.

 

I think we're past the point of any kind of open communication. In BTM's mind, I am evil and toxic - so anything I say is obviously some devilish, underhanded plot. Everything I do needs to be characterized in the least charitable fashion possible.

It isn't a situation of "we had differences and both made mistakes" its that "frosted is an evil betrayer who is bad".

So, in his mind, when I got in contact w/ him yesterday to discuss TBHC, it wasn't me trying to figure out what needed to get done to make good on our promised update, it was me trying to troll him with toxic behaviour.

When I tried to ask him if he was done with the work, that wasn't sincere or anything, that was me trying to entrap him in my toxic soap opera.

I think its beyond repair at this point.

 

Game developers do need to stick together. That's why clear communication, honesty, and respect for each others time is vital. If a person does the opposite of all of this repeatedly and only wants to communicate when they realize they depend on the other to make money, that's toxic relationship better to just avoid.


Again, make contract first thing. Establish professional communication standards. If person eschews this and wants to run instead on passions of the moment, understand they will have limited reliability, even if they have.high amount of technical skill

 

After careful consideration as a neutral outside party I have concluded that it is all your fault and none of this would have happened without your interference.
Just kidding of course. It's important that no one has any illusions about collaborations being a walk in the park.
In gamedev I tried it once, and that failed (in a very boring and predictable way). I don't see myself trying that again. Imho the only sane ways are either hire or get hired, or maybe do a time-for-time trade with someone who has a very different skillset to yours. But imho most revenue share collabs are doomed to fail.

 

See, this is another example. I'm not trying to "make money" off you.

I'd prefer to discuss either removing TBHC from steam or selling it to someone, so we can finally just end any entanglement. But since you're against that, I would like to try to make good on the promise we made.

You keep making me into some kind of evil strawman though, so no real discussion can happen.

Honestly, if you want to just make TBHC free or something, that's something I'm willing to look at also. The only reason not to do it, is I feel like we'd be kinda screwing people who spent money so far.

 

You could make the base game free, add the new campaign as paid dlc at the price that the base game used to be and give it for free to the people who paid for the basegame. Since the content apparantly is sitting there ready on your hard drives, that's what I'd look into as an option.

 

The problem is that we won't be able to agree on revenue streams going forward I think.

Ideally, BTM would buy out my end, or we'd sell the 'business' as per the contract - but there's so much personal baggage and bad faith that the reality is - the thing seems like its just stuck in limbo.

Personally, I'd be open to whatever discussion on how to fix the problem of a product sitting there with a banner saying we'll release an update that seems as if it will never be released. But there needs to be some degree of good faith in those discussions, and therein lies the problem.