Thread by @elementallis

A year ago I quit my job to focus on my dream project: #Elementallis

I think it's a very good moment to analyze this year. It might be useful for other #indiedev and #gamedev

DISCLAIMER: This is my own experience, some things worked for me and others didn't

THREAD👇

I was working at an IT consultant company. It was a comfortable job but I became bored and felt stagnant. I needed to do something built by myself that filled my creative needs.

I worked there for 4 years and because of that, I had some savings.

Before I quit my job I had already messed around with Unity. The main mechanics of the game (movement, combat, abilities, enemies) were (poorly) programmed before I quit.

When I had the savings I thought I needed for the game (boy, was I wrong!) I quit.

I started very motivated, but as soon as the project gained complexity, I realized that the programming needed to be cleaner and more manageable.

This is why Elementallis was entirely redone, using all I had learnt.

Another problem arised: I'm no artist, and even though I was improving, I was learning too slow and I knew that I couldn't make something "nice" by myself.

Since the scope was also too big for my savings (savings = time), I bought an asset ressembling the GB aesthetic.

That's how Elementallis looked before buying the asset

Left: Some months before quiting my job
Right: At the moment I quit my job

This is what Elementallis looked like at the moment (late 2019):

Sorry for the image quality, I wasn't capturing screen at the time 😅

Since the aesthetic was rather simple, I believe that I could make it more unique adding lights and using colored sprites only for the Elements.

This is the boss for the dungeon I was making:

In February I released my first demo on Itch.

At first, I was very exultant: people were playing my game! 🤩

But I became demotivated again because I had unrealistic expectations about its reception. The demo was very simple, didn't look very good.

I also didn't know anything about social media, and the demo was played by a small amount of people.

In retrospective, thought, this was a major milestone and I'm now very proud of it.

After that, I knew that I needed a better aesthetic for the game and a better demo overall.

That's when I met @oro_chan. We started working toguether and accomplished (IMO) a beautiful aesthetic.

He's the main reason the game looks so good now 😄

Left - First tileset that he made
Right - Dungeon room with lights added

We continued working to redo the dungeon I made for the first demo with new aesthetics and a better layout.

At this time, I started using Twitter and I met some wonderful people. Among them are @Raysixx_ (logo) and @musicvsartstuff (composer).

https://twitter.com/elementallis/status/1253021410928230406?s=20

Then, we released another demo to a much better response this time.

After this demo, I wanted to release another one (too many demos 😂) that feature the overworld, the story, the item system and more, something like a vertical slice.

But the Steam game festival was announced.

To participate in the festival, we needed a demo, but we didn't had much time so we focused on polishing the dungeon, adding more depth, traps and puzzles.

The festival was an amazing experience. Lots of people played the game and enjoyed it and our wishlists doubled.

We have also cemented our vision for the aesthetics, using lights, glow, reflections and shaders to constrast our pixel art.

And we're approaching the end of this year.

We're now working on the first areas (that's what you can see in our lasts tweets) and plan to release a new demo very soon.

It will feature the two first areas, first dungeon, the starting of the story, characters and items.

This will be our last demo, but we will polish it as much as we can to have it permanently on Steam.

After this, and depending on its reception, we might need to run a Kickstarter and/or look for a publisher.

A last note to my fellow developers. Making a game on your own is very difficult, if you think you need to quit your job, please make sure to:

- Have enought savings for longer than you expect
- Keep your scope as small as you can
- Have some gameplay already done

As a wrap up, if you are interested in the game, follow us to keep in touch and don't forget to add #Elementallis to your wishlist

Thanks a lot for accompanying us on this exciting journey!

store.steampowered.com/app/1304280/El…

Oops, I messed up the twitter handle, I meant @chan_oro 😅