Rough effort estimation for a new game

Hi,

I would like to develop a round based strategy game.
It's just a rough idea now but it would consist out of the following things:

• Hexagonal map for movement
• Map consists out of different terrain that affects movement
• Several points on the map where the players can interact.
• Multiplayer and singleplayer support

In general you could think about a combination of the total War campaign map and XCom .

About myself, I am working now a long time in the software development industry. So regarding the coding there should not be any issue.

But I never have build a game and for me it is hard to estimate where the effort lies.

Like a very rough estimate, how much percentage of the work goes into art, audio and codeing.

I would also not build it all by myself, I was thinking to work together with 2 artists for the 3d models and animations etc. and a single developer.

How long do you estimate would it take to get to an MVP with a team like this?

Half a year, 1 year, 2 years?

I know this is not much information but I was hopeing to get some insights and then to get a feeling if my current thoughts about the team size and setup make sense or not.

Thank you very much

 

I estimate time like this.
Take worst case you think it will take and multiply it by 5.

 

Depends on the size of the game and how ambitious it is.
If you want to get some sense, check up on Humankind. A relatively small studio (still way more people than you listed here and they got acquired half-way through by Sega) made a 4X strategy game on terrain-hexmap in Unity. But it is very polished with metric tons of features.

And they aren't beginners when it comes to games.

 

It's probably better to set a deadline and publish the game within that deadline or die trying.

You could make a game in one month or in ten years. 100% depends on you, nothing else.

 

it depends.
do you know how to use hexagonal maps? if not, add 3 months.
do you have terrain models done? if not, add two months.
code:
game code a month, interaction code a month, menu code 1.5month
multiplayer setup 2 months(?)

no sooner than half a year

art 20% : sound 20% : code 50% : idea 10%

 

Prepare for the game to be bad and/or not liking it too, i mean it seriously, being stuck in a creative loop to fix teh game direction is a big problem when making game, so it's better to learn to finish things that making them perfect. Just live and learn for the next project.Hence deadline to force you live with decision and having something external to blame.

 

There's not enough data to tell anything. Because "hexagonal map" and "several points to interact" does not tell much about which systems you're going to need in your game.

For example, if you decided to clone dwarf fortress all by yourself, that can easily take 20 years.
If you decided to clone X-com, it would take less.

What's the genre? Map painting global strategy?

 

Obvioulsy its all conjecture with this level of detail, and even if you had all the detailed scope we dont know you or your team.

If you were going for a reasonable but not top tier level of quality and willing to make hard decisions to reduce scope you might but able to get such a game done in a year with a team of 3-4.

Given you haven't built games before nor worked with the team before, it is probably more like 2-3 years.

 

The sky is the limit! Basically for any game project the amount of time you can waste on it is absolutely limitless. It's all up to you!

 

You may have coding experience, but do you have any experience of Game Design or using Unity? If not, add a couple of years time estimate to become proficient at both of those disciplines.

 

"In general you could think about a combination of the total War campaign map and XCom ."

That sounds MASSIVE. These games have big teams. I estimate 10m+ bucks in order to make something REMOTELY competitive (looking) with TW/X-Com. In six months solo you will MAYBE have a basic framework to support gameplay systems.