What are the most ambitious/well executed games made by solo developers?

I'm looking for the best examples of the most ambitious solo efforts. I know Ghost of a Tale was (at least originally) a solo effort.

I believe that he's since added staff.

I know Meridian: New World is a solo effort and is possibly the best looking so far.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/265120/Meridian_New_World/

Any others? Really top notch?

I'm trying to asses where my game is relative to other solo efforts. I'm looking at doing some actual PR in the near future and trying to figure out if pushing the solo effort angle is worthwhile.

 

Minecraft (top "Notch" sorry), Undertale and Stardew Valley come to mind

 

I'm looking more in terms of technical execution, visuals, etc. Stardew Valley, Undertale and Minecraft have some incredible gameplay, but they aren't much to look at.

Ghost of a tale is essentially AAA quality visual work (he was former DreamWorks/Universal Studio artist).

Anything else that resembles good quality AA or AAA by a solo?

 

Would probably put Banished up there.

 

Do historic games count as lots of the early arcade classics and 80's games were solo efforts.

What about Space Wars, Tetris, Flappy Bird, Manic Miner, early MUD's.

 

Thought Undertale was a 2 person team. And yeah as far as "ambitious" goes Undertale is nothing to write home about. Whilst Minecraft isn't a graphical prowess you could still consider it technically ambitious

 

https://www.redbull.com/us-en/one-man-band-the-amazing-games-made-by-solo-devs

http://www.gamesradar.com/10-games-developed-entirely-one-person/

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGamin...games_developed_by_a_solo_developer/?sort=new

Banished is kind of spartan but looks fairly nice.

 

WARSHIFT, which was also created in Unity. I think this game's visuals blows Meridian out of the water.

Gunpoint doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere either, but not the "most ambitious" project by any means.

EDIT:
Actually, I want to bring out the discussion a little bit more. What really defines a game being developed solo? (I've asked this before, but there's never a consensus.) Almost all of the games we've mentioned have had some help along the way, either to finish it up with content, or at least for music and sound effects, or even straight up contracted visuals.

This really irks me whenever the topic comes up.

A game like Papers, Please, I can say was completely done solo, in the truest sense of the word. Lucas Pope developed and implemented all creative aspects of the game.

A game like Braid, can't be classified as solo, because Jonathan Blow contracted out artwork and audio.

A game like Gunpoint, I also think was contracted out for artwork.

Banished was "almost" developed solo; he programmed it and did all of the artwork/animation, and some audio, but I don't think all of the audio.

A game like Dust: An Elysian Tale has an author who nearly implemented everything creative, but had help with voiceover work.

Anything that Jeff Vogel creates. Is that solo? He contracts out his artwork too.

So, where do you draw the line? When can you say a project is solo? I think contractors make a huge difference in the quality of a game, and yet they seem to always go unrecognized. I really hate that.

 

Nobody cares about this aspect UNTIL it's a successful or otherwise noteworthy game for other reasons. If anything it will have negative PR value, if you try to make it a central theme.

 

Are you talking about consumers or press? I'm looking more at how to promote myself to press firstly. This is more targeted at stuff like youtubers and rock paper shotgun.

Although I agree with you that it's not an angle that helps with end users, it might be something that helps increase coverage.

 

A true purist would claim that using Unity means it isn't truly solo, since you didn't roll the engine.
What about the asset store? This can also be a problem for purists.
Freelancers are a bit of a grey space, I'd agree.

I think that 'solo' w/ regard freelancers and stuff really depends on dollars spent. If those dollar figures are low enough, then you're still solo, if not, then no. If I spend $100,000 on freelancers, I'm not a solo dev. If I spend $1,000, certainly still solo.

Admittedly, it's pretty arbitrary.

 

I mean generally. You might get some leverage with press depending on the genre. I know of people in the press that specifically like to cover small indie teams. But it's still a marginal angle.

I generally work on ambitious projects, just being later in my career it makes more sense. So this is one of several related angles I've given serious thought to. My own conclusion is for an angle like this to have any major impact the stars have to align just right. Right time/place combined with other factors you might or might not have control over. So IMO leverage angles like this as best you can, they have potential. But they aren't something you can bank on.

 

Can you give some examples or do you have any experiences to share?

 

I don't want to derail the thread with my own stuff. And my project is already beyond a one man show. Not by much but it's a funded project and I couldn't reveal any details anyways at this point.

If you look at most successful one person games, you will notice that they generally do a good job in one area, an area that is directly tied to the skillset of the author. You generally won't find games by a single developer that do a great job in multiple areas that require a lot of experience or skill.

So when put into context, many of these games were not all that technically ambitious for the author. I think it's more a matter of you had someone with either a lot of experience or just really smart, combined with getting some other key areas right, that resulted in a great game.

 

It's one of those nebulous questions that's almost 100% grey area, just like "writing a game from scratch".

To my mind nothing I've written is truly "solo" because it's built on top of the work of those who came before me, with the obvious thing around here being Unity itself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and deliberately eschewing it for almost anything other than learning purposes strikes me as a massive waste of time... but in any case, no person is an island.

 

some other interesting solo dev games,
http://manifold.garden/ *watch his stream to see what real solo dev is about https://go.twitch.tv/williamchyr

Leaving Lyndow, and his next title http://www.eastshade.com/

 

I'm pretty impressed by "Rise to Ruins" maybe also Kenshi? though I think both games are still in development and are quite Niche, so not everyone will agree I'm sure

 

Working solo is easy to define. Ask yourself this question: who is on your payroll? If you have to pay only yourself on a monthly basis, then you are working solo. If you have to regularly pay others to do work on your game, then you are not working solo.

Working solo is defined through who is working on a game directly, not through who contributed indirectly. People who run pig farms contribute pork to your crunch-time pizza, but you wouldn't say that you work with them on your game.

 

But I want to credit him, his name? Wild Hog. If it wasn't for him riding those little piggies to market, then I would have no bacon, and without bacon, the sky becomes grey and winter is forever.

---

Anyway, IMHO the true star solo developers are my 8 bit (and 16 bit) heroes, of which are too many to list. Games on those machines simply took more intelligence and much more imagination to create because if you didn't use quite a bit of imagination and graph paper, you were probably not going to finish it. That's ambition!

---

If you're the main decider on if your game is good or not, then it's probably going to tank hard. If your game is great, people will find out all about you and ask you questions.

If you have to promote a game as being by one guy - it's a pity vote isn't it?

 

I'm not trying to assess if the game is good or not, I'm trying to figure out where it is relative to other games in it's production category in terms of production value and technical polish.

As for pity vote - please - I'm way beyond that. You should be as well.

Solo effort is a "special interest" category and has played a part in the success of a number of games. If I can leverage that, great, if not, then that sucks. This isn't about "pity votes" or anything in the realm of moral judgement.

This is about reaching out to press and offering a reason for them to write an article about my work.

 

I'm not attacking you.

So many games are solo developer. Practically everything out on mobile is. Half of steam greenlight was. It's not new. My point is (and I'm sorry I failed to express this somehow first time round) that you can't push solo developer in marketing, doing so has to be organic or it really is just marketing and nothing more. And that's a pity vote because one man really can't beat a team all things being equal so why else would the customer choose your game?

You want them to pick your game for it being good. Putting solo dev on the table of reasons to pick you is saying what? You tell me.

I think those games that became known for a single developer happened organically. I highly doubt they went out and shouted it from the rooftops. I'm pretty sure it will come out organically in the first couple of interviews or in reviews.

 

Most of the important press that games get revolves around pre-release hype. If you look at the meridian example:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/meridian-new-world/

All 3 of these articles are pre-release. Each entirely revolves around it being a solo work. None are based on the quality of the game outside of it's visuals. I'm not really sure what your point is, other than to say that you object to me trying to find an angle that might work or be of interest to press.

None of those have anything to do with the game being "good" or not, since none of them were hands on.

Considering the fact that you have tended to direct a fair amount of negativity towards me in the past, I'm pretty sure you dislike me personally for some reason. That's cool man. But I'm really not trying to argue here, I'm just trying to collect data points.

If you have some actual data points to share, great.

 

It's all a huge grey area, but I think maybe I'd draw the line at "if a part you outsourced in a way could be trivially interchanged with something else" it still is really a solo effort, but if switching that thing would considerably change the experience a player has, then it no longer counts as a true solo effort for me. E.g. I have a mix of smoke/fire simulations baked to particle spritesheets that are made by me, and that are from an assetstore asset, and the shader is also from the assetstore. I could make it all myself, but the experience for a player would still be the same. Music is something else, I want to compose my own music, albeit with heavy use of industry standard sample libraries which sort of is its own assetstore, but whatever. If I just bought music it would be a considerably different experience and feel much less like "entirely my own creation" to me. I care about that, others won't. In the end its more important to me to prove to myself I can do it all alone than getting the best conceivable quality, in the same way you won't find many painters that let others paint their oil paintings for them. For them (and there are plenty of valid exceptions) it would defeat the point of making the artwork, if someone else does some of the work.

I think the value of the solo-dev angle only comes in after people look at screenshots or trailers and already think "wow that's cool!". You then tell them "and by the way... all a solo-dev effort.", and they're hopefully impressed by that because the game already impressed them under the assumption it was done by "a proper studio" or wherever people think "proper games" come from.
That's the gamer side, about the press side I honestly have no idea. I only follow youtubers, traditional games media might as well not exist for me. I think you need to sell to people what they are most interested in. For that you need to know the people you are selling to. E.g. totalbiscuit likes extensive customization options and FOV sliders, many others don't care at all. Some have a big heart for solo indies, some just care about the games. I'd try as good as possible to custom tailor your messages for every outlet, streamer and youtuber. Put in at least one sentence showing that you know a bit about them.

And one quote that I found really interesting: "People don't buy what you make, they buy why you make it.".



Something else PR related that I would consider is, outsourcing creation of colorgrading LUTs to a really good specialist in that field, who is experienced with games (I wouldn't know where to find one, sorry), and has calibrated highend screens. Especially with the context that "it's too dark" is something that several people commented on in the past for your screenshots, and you sometimes just need a fresh pair of eyes on a project to do final touches that can have a lot of impact. I don't know what your project looks like at the moment, but I know from experience that over time you just get way too used to whatever you stare at for a long time and I wish I could get a few months to step away from each project before I do final color tweaks with fresh eyes. In your position you can only outsource that.
Depending on where the project is at already (I haven't seen it in a while) in terms of colors, this potentially could be a really good bang for the buck imho. If you ask me No man's sky was sold like 40% on colors and 60% on wild promises.

 

That "pity vote" thing hit a little too close to home. I've been furious for the last half an hour honestly. The reality is, I've invested nearly 3 years of my life into building out this game. It's got another year left until it's actually truly a good game. I know that it's not "good" yet, but I have faith in the fact that it'll get there if there's time improve it.

My goal is to do whatever's possible to get the time needed to really finish it, really flesh out the bones and make the thing "good".

Some of that might involve trying to use any resource I can, any possible advantage. If having built out one of the more impressive solo works to date is a potential marketing point, then I'd be pretty foolish not to consider it.

I'm also trying to figure out what I can potentially offer customers in terms of input into the game. Like possibly offering "kickstarter reward" style content to people via steam. Is that bribery on top of pity? Maybe, but if it helps get me the time needed to make this game good, then I'm willing to consider it.

 

I assure you I don't like or dislike anyone on the forums, it's purely a cerebral exercise with like minded individuals for me. Except actual trolls. I can be pretty straightforward with my remarks. Again, not attacking you. It's in your imagination.

If I did not care about you entirely, I really wouldn't remark.

 

go with whatever YOU can justify, if YOU know, that you aren't trying to get any pity by mentioning that you are solo at it, I don't think there should be any reason not to use it.
I don't know why exactly "pity vote" was even brought up here tbh, cause I think it's completely out of place when it's about trying to find your place, your specialty among the thousands of developers out there.
I'm sure that won't be only "being solo" anyway.

Also, it's the determination of going on (you mentioned 3 years) solo on a project that likely has looked much worse in the beginning, probably accompanied by a lot of struggle and special challenges through the "being alone at it" which are all great subjects and of interest for press etc.
at least, that's what I think.
The person behind a game, in regards to indies, matters.

 

Preorder-whatevers are frowned upon, but afaik "heat signature" (by the guy who made gunpoint) had a sort of "early adopter bonus" where in the first two weeks post launch within the game's world there was an event that would permanently unlock a very useless but fun gun. I liked that idea, and afaik it went well both in terms of sales and public reception because no one can feel scammed because of it.

 

That's probably true for a handful of games. Far more common a purchase decision would be:

• wow this is fun
• everyone says this is fun
• it's a genre I love
• all my friends play it

Those are way, way, WAY more common reasons people will actually buy your title. The emo angle, the solo dev angle, that's not going to fly. A S***ty pop up restaurant doesn't deserve more business than a chain outlet if the chain outlet tastes better. And people are becoming more wise, more demanding.

Saying you're solo or have a special story behind it is a minority or reason that probably would only work for very few devs when you consider how many games are successful for not that reason.

Anyway there's no reason whatsoever solo developers can't make wonderful games. I'm just saying that gimmicks are a bigger risk, and focusing on making something fun and great is the key.

 

Cos everyone isn't reading what I'm saying. I'm not accusing, I'm saying that press and public is becoming more perceptive of it as a tool. Case in point: this thread. Basically we're not the first to notice by a long shot. It was just given a name.

We should've called it something like solo perception affecting exposure or something.

But OK it's fine - apologies to anyone I apparently offended

 

Seems to have derailed, but I suppose I'll chime in.

I agree that a game's merit shouldn't be affected by the person(s) behind it. While this does often have an affect on how people view the game it doesn't determine the game's actual success. Personally I look at games objectively, if I have to tell my friends to check out a game because this one guy made it and it was a feat for what he accomplished rather than being actually fun, they aren't going to care - unless its actually fun for them to play.

That's probably like the pity vote, if I did promote that game then my promotion would basically be out of pity because the game isn't actually good, I just felt he deserved recognition for his effort even though it wasn't actually comparatively good. I'm surprised anyone would be offended by the notion that this is a real thing, because it's socially common.

 

I think press is viral. Youtube or traditional doesn't matter. If you can get in the door somewhere, somehow, then others will cover the game as well. The question is, rock paper shotgun, how do I email them? What do I say that might get them to write an article about the game?

What about quarter million sub youtubers? How do I get their attention without a sack of dollars? Can it be done? I donno.

What is "comparatively good"? Better than others in genre? Better than the AAA efforts? Just fun?

What if it's fun for 3 hours, but not for 30? Do you make exception for early access or beta?

This stuff is so subjective. Reviewers have always reviewed the material with an understanding of the source. If they were for example reviewing a pre-release copy, they tended to overlook bugs, lack of polish, etc.

How do you categorize a game? Is it by it's genre? It's price tag? The art style? What is the appropriate comparison.

Indies have always been reviewed separately and given preferential treatment by press. That's always been the case since "indie" became a thing.

Kickstarter titles have wildly warped user reviews and press coverage.

 

All of these and more.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/how-do-i-contact-one-or-all-of-the-men-of-rock-paper-shotgun/

I'd try to look for specific reviewers that reviewed games as close as possible to your game (maybe Mount and Blade, Mordheim and Vakyria Chronicles in your case?)

I'd look for the youtubers that focus on games with audiences that would be interested in that kind of game. You have 0% chance to get covered by pewdiepie and even if he would you'd probably get no tangible result from it. Totalbiscuit once said the smaller more focused channels shift more units than he does.
His video is a bit old but there's probably still something of value in it for you:

 

it's definitely true, that channels/press who has an interest in specific genres/types of games and yours fit in it, it's more likely you get good and usable response/reviews from them
I mean, it just makes sense, that a sandbox rpg will likely not be featured in an fps shooter type of magazine.
also, when going through the effort of researching possible reviewers and taking their interests into account, I'm sure that's much more likely gonna result in successful contact (and standing out from mass of e-mails) than trying to get your game shown everywhere

 

I think that unless you meet a high perceived quality bar in production (Lost souls abide) the surprise of a one man dev is largely gone with the indie era, it's now an expectation. IN fact for every occurrence of a dev giving the perception of hi quality, it just raise the expectation even higher while diminishing surprise, it might even create backlash as people don't understand you are not as good as X which made a game that is less complex and less featured but has character that looks like FF21 ...

I'm pessimistic

 

This is really my question, where is the current bar for top tier solo work?

Has that bar completely disappeared? What exactly would it take to be worth mentioning?

 

I think that question is hard to answer directly because the situation is complex, I don't think I can answer it directly, by pointing at what a bar really is, but I would say the bar is something like "lost souls abide", ie AAA looking game. But tide is forever rising when I see the comment of players on various platform, but at the same time thing aren't clear cut.

One thing contributing to skew perception are the ton of video tut on youtube that never finish anything and gave the illusion that it just takes a few minutes to make good assets and make a game. They are not complete games but they have hi quality. You see a lot of comments about how dev are lazy because it tooks 5s of rando to fix non problem n8746154 ... with no regards that putting a whole game together is more difficult than the sum of the part.

Things aren't clear cut because I think there is a matter of "perception". Player don't have specific and knowledgeable idea of what thing looks and what effort takes, something that look passable for a trained eyes might look just fine for them, and it happen in the forum too, which mean you have a lot of room to improvise and cut corner.

They seem to react to 4 distinct points when judging a game:

1- Personality of the work, world and atmosphere.
Player are much more accepting of things if they are engross by the games world and concept. It become "a style". Alone that does not make the perception of effort enough but it does sway the final judgement. I'm not an amazing artist but I had observed this phenomenon on my artworks:
a - person is not engross by the drawing, even if it's my best render, they see all the flaws first.
b- they are engross by the drawing, I have seen worse drawing of mine being tolde they are so good I should work at disney, and being shared around ... to my dismay lol.
If you are perceived as too derivative or generic, criticism fly, you get compare to the best work, regardless of effort and result.

2- Visible attention to details
I say visible because perception is all about smoke and mirror, many smart games have hero shoots, hero scenes, hero assets or hero animations that are here to draw attention to them and raise the standard of the whole game, they may or may not be expensive to make, effort is really irrelevant regarding impact.

I use to work on company, we were making a game called totem that was never release, it was dubbed by people who had seen it "the tomb raider killer" (underworld was announced around teh same time). The game used a tech called SESS, that basically a way to have the character be aware of the environment, but what it did was gameplay most to add context trigger to animation. In order to sell the game through the tech, the creative director decided to add a specific animation, just for presentation, the character put her hand on a wall while navigating close to it, it was super hacky, people where blown away by this detail ...

after that presentation, a few month later Tomb raider had a similar feature but more robustly implemented (I don't think they knew it was a hack that only worked at a specific place for the presentation). Our game where tiled, nobody complained because the world was promising, however they did complained because two close columns was broken the same way ... salient stuff get notice more than background repetition that build atmosphere.

3- scope
If you demonstrate the game has a lot of content (regardless of average quality) people tend to be impress, because a lot mean lots of efforts, and for a single guy that's impressive. Be sure the content are padding the critical path and are optional, even AAA use this for side quests to inflate the perception of their games. Even the new zelda have a lot of copy pasting to meet the quota.


4- production values
It's still a perception, untrained eyes won't come to see if your texture look perfectly PBR with the right material if it looks plausible. So having something that compare superficially to the best production put you at their level, most player don't know better. This is something I pointed in lost soulds abide, the cinematic animation aren't that great, but they are smartly used and have the right limitation, if you point at the disparity that's literally nitpicky. There is a number of effect that are "cheap" (relatively in production term) that tend to signify quality superficially, that's the lens flare or bloom of each generations of tech. Using them don't guarantee the perception, but used smartly it's part of the wow factor.

Here is a game I think qualify and did have some head turned:


http://i.imgur.com/GnJZjGT.gif (click here if not embedded)

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...secret-police-communist-czechoslovakia-i1980s

It has a strong personality and atmosphere, the dev has a chilling backstory, use a lot of "cheap effect" (ie use pre made asset for the light and reflection), use physics for awesome animation, has attention to details with the AI behavior and wildlife, it's an open world so there is scope. The dev has also a stance on game to sell and the game is unlike any other (not generic) in a genre that is done to death (driving).
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=43705.0

Damn 1h to type an answer lol

 

I feel like I've asked you this before, but are you planning on EA? A year is a bit longer than I personally would like as a gamer, but that's really quite reasonable--I got Kenshi in EA like four years ago and it's still there. You could continue work on the main elements you want to update, while possibly allotting time to fix bugs and such which would inevitably come up in a public release. but it would get you a little cash flow, along with the associated benefits of actually getting a community, feedback, etc.

Put your game on EA and get my money, if no one else's.

You need to write something compelling, that convinces the reader that what you're trying to show them is worth their time. If you can't do that, find someone who you can work with who can help you out with that. Not talking about making up nonsense here, but actually speaking influentially. Rhetoric is real, and it's not the four letter word we often make it out to be.

I hope you're feeling a bit better because I'm going to be a little mean here (though only in love): you need a better online presence. A quote from your greenlight page: "Cool been looking forward to this, but if you dont keep people posted your gonna lose people mate, anyway glad its still coming along ill have a look at that trailer now ."

You gave a single later news item, but nothing else. And there's no where else to go for news on your game. no website with pictures, a couple videos maybe, just a paragraph or two per week (or month!) update, an email signup for when the game hits EA/release.

You might argue that that hasn't been the purpose thus far. That you shouldn't really be marketing unless you're about to release the game. I'd say fair point, but I'd also say the game shouldn't be on greenlight (yeah I know, greenlight's gone now, point still stands) until you're reading for some marketing. Don't worry about emailing RPS or PC Gamer until you've got that stuff in place. And for the record it doesn't have to be something grandiose. You can set up a website quite quickly. But the thing is to give an interested party a place to go for more information, and give yourself a way to 'hook" them.

Did you see that thread I made? May have gotten buried. (https://forum.unity.com/threads/pc-...e-for-an-indie-showcase-edit-new-info.495151/)

Turn that sucker in. Give interested parties a place to go, even if it's just your dev email address with a stock email response.

Again, understand I say all of this in love I found BS&G interesting from the moment I saw it, so I want to see more of it.

Join the club.

 

Undertale, The Binding of Isaac, Hyperrogue, Gunpoint, The Consuming Shadow, Iji, Spelunky, Cave Story... actually, all my favourite games are by solo developers.

It's not a guarantee of quality, and in fact by many measures these games are worse than others, but they all have enormous amounts of personality.

 

I'm kinda relieved I'm not the only one who does that.

Email signup (maybe to get a free pack of digital goodies like wallpapers, music and avatar pictures) sounds like a great idea!

 

I think this is also very valid. You do see a lot of immensely impressive video, but there's still a pretty big gap between those videos and actual games.

The question is, do normal people or gaming press watch those videos, are they as exposed to the same media as we (being interested/involved in dev) are?

@EternalAmbiguity, @Martin_H
I appreciate the more direct comments about my work and suggestions for me specifically, but I'm not quite ready to talk about my direct plans for promotion yet. I will be putting up a post outlining my general plan, showing the current state of the game and asking for feedback shortly once I have at least a cohesive plan for the pr effort.

If there's anything interesting or worthwhile, I'll share my experiences w/ the forum, good or bad. Let you guys learn from my mistakes.

Right now though, I'm really just trying to collect data, look at the best examples, etc.

Where is the market at the moment? I have a pretty good idea of where it was about a year or a year and a half ago, but it's changing so frickin fast. What's the competition like these days?

 

Wow, I had no idea he got covered by the Guardian! That's really impressive.

Also, after reading the article, that's a truly amazing story.

 

No problem, take your time!

Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences! This can be very valuable for all of us and hopefully including you.

I can't give you any actionable data, but from a gamer perspective I find it harder and harder to get excited for anything. It's all a big "meh". I don't click through all the weeklong sales anymore, and the games I've bookmarked on my wishlist are mostly producing a reaction of "I guess I could check it out in the next 80% off sale" rather than "Boy this is gonna be great!". For christmas I've still lined a few games up for the inevitable sale and plan to binge through them for a few days, but for the next year... I don't know. I might start replaying some of my all-time favorite classic games like Jagged Alliance 2 or System Shock 2.
I have plenty of untouched indie games from humble monthly (a pile growing quicker than I can play them), but I just don't care enough to actually play them. Like Maize, or Stories Untold, both of which have good reviews. I might at some point get bored enough to try them, but there's nothing really compelling me to actually do it and there's no chance I'd ever buy them on my own.

I doubt it generates many sales but might be good for SEO.

 

I think this is the wrong question to ask. The best quality games by solo devs (in terms of graphics) will undoubtedly be by people who have spent a long time (probably a career) learning and developing art skill. Unless you do the same, it's probably not worth trying to stand out in this respect.

If you're looking for something to market a solo project on, I think there's only one thing really that you can successfully use - and that is whatever reason that drove you to make the project. Everything that is not directly related to that reason is expendable to the project, and marketing your project on something that may or may not survive through it is a really bad idea imo. But your own purpose is something that not only will drive the focus and eventual character of the project - whether you like it or not - but also is something that you can always authentically communicate to people. I think it's really, really important to make sure that you take care of the people who are naturally drawn to your game and the reasons why you are doing it first, and only then try to add other marketing spins for a little bit of variety and to draw in a more general audience. But those customers who have a natural affinity to your project are the foundation of your success, and you cannot afford to lose any of them. So I would focus on attracting them first.

@frosted in terms of your game, I would suggest making a website, creating a devlog, and sending signals out into the ether to attract kindred spirits. Look at your basic motivations and the reasons why you get up in the morning, learn to communicate them, and develop your 'brand' before you try to market your game in one direction or the other.

 

When he's emailing (or the PR firm is emailing) the next guy to write an article, including a quote from mainstream press is pretty huge. It means that there's something really compelling there.

Again, even if it doesn't actually translate to sales, it can still really help the sales effort.

 

I have to disagree here as the luminaries of indie success typically did not have great visuals in particular. In fact, people do not choose indie for the visuals. This is stunningly logical because AAA is there for the visuals. All that's demanded of indie is that it be fun. People honestly are super confused on these forums.

Think about it clearly. You don't really need the best quality graphics, you want something that's terrific fun, maybe decent graphics?

I can't really think minecraft's graphics were AAA, they were just functional in the end.

 

That's why I said the best games in terms of graphics. Totally agree with your point, although it does not specifically apply to an audience made up of me.

Maybe I misunderstood, but various comments by the OP led me to believe the questions had a lot to do with visuals and presentation.

Even if it is simply 'ambitious projects' that is the question, I still think my comment applies. There's no point focusing on it if it is not the motivating factor for you, and marketing it as such is likely to fail.

 

I think it's also worth noting that "presentation" covers a lot of different fronts. It's not just "graphics".

A great deal of presentation quality is in crisp clear information. Good UI, sharp lines, clear indicators, fluid animation, etc.

Camera work is another good example, careful design for camera can have tremendous impact on presentation, while doing nothing for graphics per say.

 

I just wanted to say I think this is pretty darn valid.

I agree that if your game's selling point is "made by one person" then it's pretty telling that the game isn't otherwise very interesting.

But, if your game is already interesting and impressive and attention grabbing, then anything cool you can talk about on top of that has to be a positive, right? It might help keep the conversation on you for a bit longer before it moves along to the next game. It might also give people something extra to remember you or your game by, because you can add some personal story to it or some other special interest thing other than the standard sales bullet points for games.

It's almost exclusively going to influence the enthusiast crowd who follows game developers as well as games, but that's ok, because those people can be an important part of your game's initial audience. Do anything you can to get those peoples' interest so that when you release your game they buy it, play it, and hopefully love it and rate you well and rave about it to their friends and write nice things in reviews and so on. Might not be many sales in it, but anything to grease the axles early on is good!

That all said... the solo dev thing seems to be becoming a more common story and thus perhaps a much less interesting one, as others have already raised.

 

@frosted from this comment I thought you were focusing on visuals. But again maybe I misunderstood.

In any case, I think that as a solo dev, you cannot afford to fail at marketing your personality. People who are drawn as an audience to solo projects are very likely interested at least as much in the person and their reasons as the game they are making. That's why I think your best approach right now is to learn how to write compellingly about the journey you are taking, and put it on a website in the form of a devlog.

In fact I would go so far as to say that behind almost every really good organic marketing campaign (i.e. one that doesn't cost a ton of money) is a great story and some interesting people. You can wait for Pewdiepie to be that person, or you can be it yourself. That's the way I see it.

 

I think things are starting to go round in circles now.