Is it possible for a small team of high schoolers to create a game like Dark Souls/Bloodborne?

Hello! I'm currently about to start high school, a couple of friends and I decided on a project that we want to work on for the next 4 years; A 3D action RPG in the same vein as FromSoftware's Dark Souls and Bloodborne. We're most likely going to be using Unity, as all of us have hardware capable of running it, it can accomplish what we need, and one of us already has a few years experience with the engine and the C# language. In the 4 year timeframe, we aim to learn Unity, get a good grasp on it, and at least make a working prototype version of the game to use as a proof-of-concept to get funding by making a Kickstarter, or by showing it to a publisher.

We plan on working our asses off to the maximum in order to get to this goal, and I'm just asking here to make sure it's even something worth trying.

Another thing I'd like to note is that the game would probably be shorter than the Soulsborne games, and it would probably have a simpler, cell-shaded graphical style (think Breath of the Wild) instead of the realistic style of Soulsborne.

 

Probably not. Do a search for "indie games" to see what sort of stuff is more realistic.

 

If you guys are really motivated, consider trying to make a single level with a boss, rather than a full game. Something that may take an hour to play through, assuming its pretty challenging. Look at other student projects to get an idea of how much typically gets done. Don't make the mistake of thinking you and your friends will be any better -- only think that after you have proven so.


check this student project out (final video is at the end. looks like most of the people involved got jobs because of this work): https://polycount.com/discussion/192103/the-resistance/p1

 

What I would like also to highlight, along what been said, be careful, when planning do something with other person. No matter how long you know each other. Specially during highs cool, when lot of things my change. Including relation ships. Young people tends to try and explore things. Then drop quickly what is not interested to them.

You may end up completely fine. But chances that you, or your friend decide that don't want to do it at some point? Or get bored, or overwhelmed. Then one of party is let alone. Onside note, there is relatively few happy "friend" stories in development. However, you can hear someway stories, where one turns back on other. This is not to discourage, but to make awareness.

Hypothetically, lets say you both working intensively on a project. Then on second-third year, one of you drops from project, for any reason. Lets say you continue and make successful product in the end on 3-4 yer. Unless is set from the begging, that project is more like partnership, rather friendship, you may run into many unpleasant conversation, if one of you don't accept how it turned out. Well it is life.

But as well, you may end up working over 10 years together

Point is, be prepared for any results. From expected success to unexpected hard failure.

 

So first of I'd say try to build the game in layers. So as was said before above me try to have layer 1 be your character, the combat mechanics, heal/stamina/damage mechanics, and a level (small arena) with an enemy/boss.

Then on to layer 2 by slowly building upon that and add an inventory, an additional armor/weapon set, heal/damage items, ring that boosts a stat and so on. Whatever you feel like adds value to your game and the gameplay.

Then add layer 3 by creating a small enemy or a second boss that you can fight in the finished arena or in an (new) additional level. Maybe connect the levels and allow the player to travel between them.

You get where this is going. Try to take small steps and see how long it takes and what you had to do. There's more to it than you'd think beforehand. A group of students in 4 years could make a great game, but you'd have to learn programming, animation, artwork, textures/shaders, sound effects /sound track, UI design, game design and there's even more on the marketing and business side of things.

There are AAA studios who try to replicate the Dark Souls and Bloodborne games and who 'fail' so make sure you're not just trying to recreate a game you love to play that took a professional studio years to make. Think hard about what you want your game to be and how that's going to compare to other games.

Just to give you an impression of those games, there's Lords of the Fallen, The Surge, Necropolis, Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption, Vampyr, and these are just the ones on my radar. You're also competing with other 'hack and slash' games or even RPG's such as The Witcher, so your game better have one hell of a unique selling point to stand out.

Well, this turned out more 'scary' than I intended, but my advice is to try to get that 'layer 1' finished, see how much time and effort that took all of you, if you're all still on board after that and go on to layer 2, and so on. Don't fall into the trap of 'sunk costs' where you feel stuck to the project because you already invested so much. You're students from what I understand so take risks, learn, and don't be scared to 'fail' because that's also a learning experience.

 

Possible, yes. Likely, no.

High school game studios are like high school garage bands. Most fail pretty quickly. A few make it to the local pub circuit. And about one in a million make it big.

Your odds are better if you come from a game dev background. Indie teams that have all worked for other game studios for ten years tend to be more successful.

 

The people who made the games you're naming as examples also "worked their asses off to the maximum", and they had a whole bunch of experience that you don't before they began.

Definitely have a go at this stuff, but do it with realistic expectations so you don't end up disappointed with the results.

 

Yeah, as I said in the post, I want to have a prototype proof-of-concept done in 4 years, not the full game. Probably 1 or 2 areas and a boss or two. I mostly just want something to show off, and then hopefully get some recognition, funding, and maybe a larger dev team.

 

Yeah, my relationships with other people working on the project is actually the main thing I worry about. I'm trying to keep the scope small for what we need to complete in 4 years (a prototype demo to show in a kickstarter or to a publisher) so that nobody gets overwhelmed.

 

Considering the timeframe (which I missed before), your scope worries me less than the timeframe itself.

4 years is a heck of a long time ahead to be planning for someone just starting high school. Things will change in that time, a lot. On the flip side, if you start making smaller projects now then, if you're still at it 3 years from now, I'd be somewhat confident that you could make a two area combat game prototype in a year.

 

Yeah, I'm quite aware of this. I've just wanted to work on a game since I was about 8 or 9, and I've had an idea for this specific RPG since I was about 12. Now I have a couple people on board with the idea, and it doesn't seem nearly as hard to pull off now that I'm not alone. If I don't make a ton of money off of it, it's fine, it's a learning experience for me, and I'll finally be able to work on my dream game after all these years.

 

My plan was to spend the first 2 years making small projects, and have a prototype like that to show off by the end of the 4th year.

 

Wow, thanks for taking the time to type all this out! I'll definitely take this advice to heart. As for making it stand out, me and one of the other people have managed to come up with a weird, but unique and interesting setting. The full game (if it's made) will also be a bit shorter than a typical game in it's style, and it will probably be quite a bit cheaper as well.

 

That sounds fundamentally reasonable.

My advice would be to spend some dedicated time in the first couple of years learning your respective areas of expertise. As in, spend time learning programming and art on their own along the way, as opposed to just Googling tutorials to make things piecemeal as you go. Also make games, because that will build other skills you'll also need.

 

Definitely. As of right now, I mostly plan on being the game director, and also a programmer and level designer. I'll probably try to learn Blender or something as well, but I've never been the artsy type. Who knows, though. I could end up being a modeler by the end of this.

 

Design and programming and art? That's a lot to pick up! Each of those are fields of study unto their own.

As a designer you do not need to know modelling. For levels just learn a tool like ProBuilder well enough to build levels to a grid. Get the shapes and areas and maybe colour themes down, and let artists take it from there.

For programming, get the C# Yellow Book by Rob Miles (which is free) and start chipping away at that, and also start working your way through the Unity Learn section.

If you're not "the artsy type" then I would strongly suggest leaving that to someone else. But that could be personal bias as that's exactly what I've done for 10+ years.

 

I actually have the yellow book! I'll probably be studying that pretty extensively.

Also, thanks for replying so much! Getting advice from experienced users is really helpful.

 

This. Once I was done with school for the day, the studying, and the homework I had at most maybe an hour or two to spend learning programming. I don't believe I would have been able to fit anything else in with it and that's with trying to squeeze some gaming in for my brain to have some downtime (some recreation is important after all).

 

I can agree with first paragraph.

But with second not necessary. Is nothing wrong to try many things early and get feeling about them. In case of modelling, it can helps understand, what are possibilities and limitations of technical implementation. And don't need it to master. But enough to get basic grasp, and be able do simple things. It would helps with design specifications and problem understanding. Of course, you can have people and asset, to do the job for you. But this is a bit like dumping all into bucket, without understanding what is in it. And then you start getting weird results.

But don't rush things.

 

Whether or not it is possible is both relative and unimportant. You should absolutely give it a shot. It’s a good time to find your passion and start working towards it. If you pull it off, it’s great head start. If you don’t, it’s still a great learning experience. Anything could happen over that time, you find a different direction to with your game, or may find out you don’t like game development. It’s a wonderful time to give it a shot. Go for it, and good luck!

 

I didn't say not to do modelling. All I said is that it's not necessary to be able to do it in order to be a designer.

 

I didn't indicate you are wrong, or anything. Only that I don't necessary agree, or (read) fully agree with your statement.

Yes you don't need it, to be a designer, or just a designer. But my point was, that person can benefit from being familiar with such tools, as a designer. Therefore, is worth to get some hands on. That all was to it

 

OK before anyone does a 'can I make this' have you checked the following:

• The team size of the games you want to mimic (teamSize).
• The time it took the developers to make the game worked out in hours (devTime)

Now work out your own values for the same variables...

• myTeam - Your team size.
• mySkillLevel - Your skill level compared to the original team as a ratio 0-1f
• myDevTime - How long you have in hours

Now run the following calculations...

amountOfGame = (myTeam * myDevTime * mySkillLevel) / (teamSize * devTime);

If your amountOfGame >= 1f then you can make that game with your team.

For reference here is a credits listing of...
Bloodborne -> https://www.bloodborne-wiki.com/p/credits.html
Dark Souls -> http://darksouls.wikidot.com/credits

PS: A rough calulation only, your 4 person team over 4 years working 40 hours a week vs Bloodbornes about 200 person team working about 2.25 years.

(4 * 58,400 * 0.5) / (200 * 65,600) = 0.00890243902439024390243902439024

Or you can make about 0.8% of Bloodborne if your 4 person team have half the skill level and can work 40 hours a week for 4 years.

Which does not seem like a lot but if you consider that the game has a world with multiple locations...




Then you could probably make one small chunk of this world and the enemies within that chunk at a comparable level of quality and playable in Unity.

If you add in a simplification factor >1f e.g. 2-5x simpler for low poly or low texture details then you can start to make larger chunks of this game world.

 

What about making a procedural roguelike in a similar style, using this approach you only need to build up or buy a smaller set of props that your world building program then generates into a level.

https://assetstore.unity.com/categories/3d/environments/dungeons

Then you can focus on the more interesting aspects such as monsters and items that will appear throughout the game world.

More info on roguelike style game development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike
And there are dedicated forums and websites that provide lots of information on how to make a roguelike game with different styles of world generation.


Unity has a procedural caves example in the learning section as well as a simple 2d roguelike example.

 

The biggest challenge here has gotta be keeping a team of highschoolers together working on something for four solid years.

 

I think this is easily one of the most interesting replies I've gotten! I appreciate how you did all the math here. In 4 years, I was only thinking we'd get a prototype demo of the game done to show on a Kickstarter page or to a publisher. The game will also have a lower poly, more cartoony art style in the vein of Borderlands or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

 

I've thought of this idea before, but I just couldn't find a way for Souls-like gameplay to work in a roguelike/lite. This is because Souls gameplay is set up so the player learns about the levels they are playing in as they progress. The game teaches them how to overcome challenges by well... killing them. This is because every time you die, you lose your currency/XP, but you still have most of (if not all) your gear and you're still in the same level you were in before, allowing you to learn the level, memorize it, and strategize around that. If the game was a roguelike, each time you die, you lose everything, and the level you return to has a completely different layout.

 

So are you learning the level or how to fight the enemies in the level, if it's how to fight the enemies then the level structure or layout is less of an issue.

Also, you don't have to re-generate the levels or reset the characters the main point I was making was the reduced amount of work from getting the game to generate the game world procedurally.

How else can you make 0.8% of a game look and feel like a 100% game world?

Or work smarter not harder!

 

Well, I don't exactly plan on making a 100% game world, in 4 years I just want a semi-polished 1 or 2 level demo with a couple bosses. That demo will be either shown on a Kickstarter or to a publisher to try to get funding and expand the dev team. The full game will be made after we have more money and manpower.

But on the topic of procedural generation, I actually had an idea for a different game that uses procedural generation similar to the way The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall did. That's probably what I'll end up working on if this project fails.

 

What even is a "100% game world"? Games are mostly smoke and mirrors. Most of what you think is there is implied, not actually there.

 

Having watched the "Dan Sucks at Dark Souls" series by Extra Credit where they break down and analyze the gameplay mechanics and level design I'm of the opinion that it would be very difficult if not impossible to recapture the feeling of these games with procedurally generated worlds.

Procedural generation excels at games where the focus is on the player. Dark Souls, and other games like it, are very much focused on the world, having to learn it and the enemies that inhabit it, while trying to progress. You would need to have a very sophisticated algorithm to procedurally build a game that would satisfy a fan of the series.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvFQJa1XAXzyJzqqz6xxZXyPTLLGvJywC

 

The full game level maps and sky boxes / scenery.

 

= No Man Sky Fail (procedural generated)

 

Possible in the same way winning the lottery is possible.

Your biggest problems are going to be team cohesion, motivation, and experience level.

4 years is an incredibly long time to keep this together with high schoolers. Everyone's lives are changing, you're deciding what you all want to be as adults, and school work load is continually ramping up. I would expect the team to fall apart during that 4 years for any number of reasons. You'd be surprised how priorities change when one of your team members gets a girlfriend (or boyfriend) for example.

So what happens when there are differing opinions on the way forward? What happens when one of your team members doesn't complete work they committed to? What happens when one of your team members drops out of the project? (and what happens with the work they already put in, and the knowledge in the area they were working on that disappears from the project?) What happens when one of the team members moves away for college? What happens when one of the team members gets an after school job?

I don't know about how it works for everyone, but my friends in 9th grade and my friends in 12th grade were not the same people.

 

agreed

 

You will make anything you want but it just won't be anywhere near as good, but that might be OK though? set decent goals.

 

You can make anything what you want.
Bing Yang made playable game demo alone with AAA quality gameplay.

 

He's also a longtime character designer and visual effects artist. He didn't just come out and go "I'm gonna make a beautiful looking game." There was a lot of stuff that came first.

 

You will find a lot of the same sentiment in older people, we have all been young and ready to take on the world. But in time we learn we have two hands, one brain and only so much sanity.

Welcome to the world of game development. Everything is 12 times harder than it looks and takes 15 times longer than you think, and the results are always 40% of what you hope for. Experience and practice can reduce those penalties but that's many years worth.

Your first game will suck.

Nobody will be impressed until you make something good and even then, meh.

If you can do it... as Morpheus once said, show me.

 

My problem with the OP's line of thought is the idea of making learning a skill (game dev) a means to an end (DarkSouls-like-RPG).

Learning is a lifelong thing, and if you're making it in to something temporary and for the sole purpose of making X game, you are going to have problems.

1 year in: Ok we've learned about C# coding, and some basic Unity features. This seems sufficient lets get to work on game x! We also learned about algebra, a bit about statistics, and some history and some art.

2 years in: your friends go through their first breakups, so you lose a few 'devs' to post relationship depression and self pity, and the game is coming along but look and feels nothing like Dark Souls.
3 years in: you're all getting close to graduation, reality is beginning to sink in. The project never really looked like DarkSouls or whichever aesthetic you wanted to go with. The code base is crap you soon realize, and it becomes ever harder to work on the project due to tight coupling, lack of modularity, etc. Stress is piling on and few of your friends want to/can work on it most days of the week.
4 years on: graduation is just around the corner. Your game is getting sidelined by preparation for college and the post high school life. You eventually realize its just not going to happen. Disagreements among your friends about it have caused a rift...


Don't get me wrong, game dev is a rewarding experience. I fooled around a bunch as a middle schooler with modding and stuff but when high school came about I realized I had to prepare for the future, because it was coming ready or not.

Focus on your studies.

[edit] Go for game dev when you get in to adulthood and have graduated, and you've got your life in order.

 

Yeah, that's okay. I only want to make a prototype demo of what could be.

 

Original poster here, thanks for all the replies everyone! From the feedback I've gathered, I think I'll just work on learning gamedev with a few friends for a couple years with no specific game in mind to make, just learning and doing stuff like participating in gamejams here and there. If we're all still interested by the end of those couple years, we can then decide on the "big project" to work on. Worst case scenario I end up on my own and I can decide on a smaller game or project to pursue. It never hurts to learn something, as even if I don't create the next Minecraft, I'll still learn a skill that will potentially help me in life.

 

But don't lose that ambition. Think of it like a little ember. You want to turn into a raging inferno, but an ember can't do that. You need to nurture and build, you need space to breathe, taking on progressively bigger challenges until you have enough potential energy to burst into leaping flames that dance with primal delight... do you know da wae my brudda? Yes my brudda I know da wae.

 

I've had the dream to make video games since I was 8 or 9 years old. I just want to make something that someone will play and enjoy, and be able to escape the troubles of life to enjoy themselves, even if just for a short while. Having a little virtual world to escape to is what helped me through depression for a few years of my life, and I want to be able to give other people the same thing.

So yeah, if the little ember has lasted this long, I don't think it's going away anytime soon!

 

Not really no. He did a prototype which was highly limited and small. Now he has a huge studio due to external investment with a ton of staff. Nice try though.

 

That impresses me. What is impressive to everyone who's done anything is people doing things and not dreaming them. You do not need their level of content or anything to succeed. You just need the flavour, the interest, the fun.

If we all needed a full blockbuster game there would not be a steam store full of successful indie titles

 

I'm also liking the attitude on display here. Huge thumbs up there!

Personally, I'd hardly describe Steam as "full of successful indie titles", though.

 

What have Steam become? I ask myself this every day.

 

I just want to echo the real problem here: "4 years" + "highschool". I think your goal would be much more realistic if you were thinking in months. The mention of years alone is a red flag.

Try to think in months, maybe semesters. Tangible steps. Short term goals. Build on small successes.

Don't expect the team to stay around, understand that in order to maintain your team, you're going to need to show them tangible results fast and at each step.

If you can set a goal in 3 months and deliver on that goal successfully, then you can possibly keep going for another 3 months, and so on.

 

Why not see if it's possible to finish something in 4 weeks? no matter how small. That will quickly adjust expectations.