Article on how hard it can be to get things right in games e.g. the 18 month fence hop...

Polygon Article - The 18-month fence hop, the six-day chair, and why video games are so hard to make

So what small features in your game were the hardest to get right in development, and is there anything that would make it easier to do that Unity could do?

 

>polygon

 

Always do the dumb simple solution first. Leave sophistication for AAA who has lots of specialist on a payroll.

The production should be almost no brainer so that majority energy can go into iterating and polishing design.

I don't think you have to innovate on graphics and animation to make a selling game. Plenty of games that look like kaka that sell millions.

Taking four days to make a 3d chair seems like skewed priorities to me. Probably the article is exaggerating a bit for the sake of drama.

Graphics used to be more simple, but the tools to make them were much worse. 3d art is quite intuitive with modern tools. A chair that takes 4 days to make should be a high end hero prop for a portfolio. If Indie game production is dropping that kind of time into a single prop, I'd say the artist needs to further develop their skillset.

I'd wager most games that fail do so because of improper organization, management, and personal issues. All soft skills. Oh course the tools can always be improved but all of your favorite classics were made with much worse tools than we have now.

Leadership is essential skill for every team. Even and especially if it's a solo venture. If all you do is play games and eat food, you won't develop this important skill. Crucial then to go outside you comfort zone for personaldevelopment. Join sports team, do something that scares you, take part in community. Learn another trade, etc..

 

Procedural levels using prefabs with baked lighting.
Yeah, naive eh?

Oh and not a game feature but Collab has cost me more in lost time than any other aspect of my project.