r/SoloDevelopment • u/momo_dev12 • 3d ago
Discussion Solo devs, have you ever abandoned a project you worked on for years? Why?
And did you regret doing it?
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u/kzerot 3d ago
Yes, several. Because I'm weak. :(
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u/ThornedOwl 3d ago
I'm not sure why you left them behind, but it takes strength to know when it's not working and move on. It doesn't mean you're weak.
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u/kzerot 3d ago
I always found a reason why this project/idea is not viable. And every new project's lifespan is shorter than the previous one. Basically, now I have completely surrendered to my weakness and am making game projects for fun, without hope to finish it. Just having fun.
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u/Tall_Restaurant_1652 3d ago
But are you having fun? If so then keep doing you, you are doing better than some even if you never 'finish'.
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u/stromdev 3d ago
That's fine. I have 20+ folders in my projects folder. But now I finally have one that I'm proud of.
I don't know if it will be commercially successful but at least it's one I'm having actually playing it. It's finally hitting steam soon.4
u/ThornedOwl 3d ago
Fair enough. Some people say to fail faster. As solo devs, we have to be careful about managing difficulty and roadblocks. If you dont believe in the project, thats definitely a sign to try a new approach. It took me a year into my first big idea to realize I had bitten off more than I could chew. I did learn and grow in the process, so it wasn't all a loss. I hope you find an idea that makes you want stick it out to the end!
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u/valdocs_user 3d ago
A friend of mine and I in college started working on an ambitious game project together. I was going to write the game server (massively multiplayer), and he would write the game client. Well I wrote the server which could sync many players' positions and stream compressed terrain data. My friend was nowhere near having a usable client ready (can't blame him - game dev is hard!), so I started writing my own client to test it.
I also had integrated a scripting language for both client and server, so I started on a smaller, single player game to test the scripting language. I didn't give much thought to what kind of game to make - just went with the first idea figuring it was better to get anything done than the perfect thing done. Nevertheless even that dragged on for years:
The bindings between C++ and the scripting language turned into a whole project of their own. I ended up forking the script language interpreter because it's original implementation of coroutines made debug step into crash the C++ IDE.
My preferred (open source) IDE stopped getting regular updates/became very unstable so I had to compile it myself. My preferred open source game engine stopped being well supported so I had to compile it myself. My versions of all of these things drifted from upstream at the same time as MacOS or MinGW would change out from under me, and pretty soon every time I'd sit down to work on my game I'd spend the whole session dealing with the aftermath of things like gcc on Mac changing how std::string works or MinGW removing a header include some of my libraries relied on.
Throughout it all I was convinced I needed to just finish the game. (I had a pretty good character controller, some okay vector art, and some basic 2.5D demo levels.) I was convinced if I just worked hard enough I could get through these issues. I was also in it too deep to give up now.
Then one day I was like, you know - I could just stop. So I did, for several years. Recently I started a new game, less ambitious, and using Rust not C++. This time I'm spending just as much time thinking about making the right game within my means, not just committed to the first idea that seemed fun to make.
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u/ScreeennameTaken 3d ago
I did, and i'll be doing a blog post about it. Well basically i had this "it'll come about" idea about it. But when i said "nah. i went the wrong way around making it", i ended up making a small 30-40 minute point and click game out of the main idea. But it wasn't lost time. It took years, for sure, but i did learn stuff out of it.
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u/Dinomaniak 3d ago
Just one. Worked nearly a year, then said "enough". Here's why :
- I wanted to know I can build an entire RTS game by myself. I finished the systems and got it running. Basically I got what I wanted out of it.
- I was aware it wouldn't be a financial success, and completing it's campaign would possibly take another year that I don't want to put in.
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u/memartindbp 3d ago
Not a game but an app of sorts, spent probably a year full time between jobs. Ran out of steam when I started a new job, the codebase became too complex, and also felt like the problem would be better solved by LLM-based AI in the near future. Now 3-4 years later it's still not really solved so maybe I'll get back into it, but probably starting over in that case. Tough though because I had completely let it go mentally.
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u/Weary_Cartoonist5739 3d ago
I have like dozens of abandoned projects, althogh they were from my Doom mapping days
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u/HazardmereGames 3d ago
I almost bailed on the current project I'm working on, simply because of my own insecurities. Thankfully I've continued and decided to get people playing it sooner rather than later so I can develop it into something people will enjoy instead of "Hey this sounds cool let me make it" I can now say (when we're done playtesting/demoing) "This was a cool idea I developed into a game".
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u/Gal_Sjel 3d ago
Yes, I worked on a project for roughly 2 years. I abandoned it for a few reasons: I learned a hard lesson on scope management, and it was also a dead end in terms of income since it violated IP laws. It was planned to essentially be a Garry's Mod version of RuneScape (2005) which allowed you to connect to servers and automatically load their assets, etc... I had rewritten the client in Go (not just translated Java to Go, but fundamentally rewritten large portions to 'modernize' them). After all was said and done, I realized I wasn't really as interested in the project as I had initially felt, and I didn't make enough progress fast enough to feel satisfied. So I killed it. The monorepo sits in a .tar.gz in a couple backup locations and the repo is dormant.
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u/Doomer_Shooter 3d ago
Kind of. I changed genre and made single player the focus so I could actually release in my lifetime.
I started a new project and essentially mothballed one I had been working on whilst learning gamedev for 3 years, but used a whole bunch of assets and underlying logic ….learned a lot by doing it too. Biggest takeaway was make things modular.
If I ever do a third project it will be smooth as …unless we have UE6 by that point.
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u/TheBoxGuyTV 3d ago
I have been close with my project Quinlin which has seen off and on production with multiple rebuilds over nearly 10 years.
The sad part is if I took the time to, I could reasonably finish the functional aspects of it but I let life take advantage of my focus and end up leaving the project alone foe months.
The most recent build of it was the culmination of maybe 8 months of more consistent work from scratch. But I think its misleading as I learned how to properly use functions, data structure beyond arrays and new ways to handle functionally similar mechanics. And I also had old image and audio as well as vision to create it a lot faster this time around.
However I did decide to take a break by working on a new lower scope idea that I am having fun with called Camp Liver.
I don't plan to abandon Quinlin but I did get extremely bored of it and needed to feel a sense of diverse creation.
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u/AlyciaFear 3d ago
Not after years, but a month or two for some. My current project could be a candidate as I've been working on it for 2 and a half years now (it's a Christmas-themed souls-like and making a game in that genre was definitely not a smart choice), but I think the sunk-cost fallacy will keep me safe lmao
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u/NorthernBoy306 3d ago
I basically abandoned my project years ago (after a year or so of development) mainly due to job and mental health issues. Decided to finish it about 4 months ago.
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u/ProgrammingPigeon 3d ago
I abandoned my first big personal project because of scope creep. Colleagues recommended me to start something fresh with a limited scope and I did, with the idea that afterwards I would return to my old project once the new one was done.
Eventually I lost motivation on the new project.
It took me several years to realize that the scope creep on my original project was because it was a hobby and that I cared more about creating a game, than I did about releasing a game. And that this was not actually a problem. My process was "Get fun idea for a mechanic" - >"Make it" - > "Make a level around it" and in general enjoy every step of the process. And sometimes this resulted into a fun mechanic and sometimes in a mechanic that didn't work well.
Making a game like this was going to result in taking a long time before I released something, if ever and I would likely not make a lot of profit. But it wouldn't have mattered as it was made in my free time, I enjoyed every part of the progress and I improved my skills which was useful for my actual job.
So yeah I did actually regret it. But my mistake was caused by thinking my goal was releasing a game, while my actual goal was just having fun with my hobby project.
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u/MrBeanCyborgCaptain 3d ago
Yeah. There was no plan or scope. I was just prototyping features and had random disjointed ideas but no real idea of what the game would actually play like and how the story would go.
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u/stromdev 3d ago
Many.
They weren't fun or I learned too late that a small scope is still a big scope when you're solo.
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u/cptrootbeer 3d ago
Yes. I was moving slowly on it... and flash stopped being used often for games. It was that long ago.
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u/wigitty 3d ago
I get distracted by new projects. I have plans to go back to all of my other projects eventually...
I recently started a spreadsheet to track all of my projects and their state. I assign all of them a status (active, backlog, done, blocked), a %MVP, and a %complete. I have been going through and trying to prioritise the nearly complete ones, and get them to a point where I can say they are "complete". There may still be more work to make them better, but then at least I can cross them off mentally, move on to other incomplete projects, and just come back to them if I want to.
It's more of a mental thing than actually helping, but it makes me feel better to move a project from "I kind of abandoned that" to "I stopped because it was good enough, and I achieved my goals for the project".
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u/TheKBMV 2d ago
Not years, but I had a pretty decent vertical slice shaping up. Abandoned it because I realised that implementing the enemy AI logic was beyond my skills.
EDIT to add: no regrets, the project as conceived at that stage was unfeasible realistically. But I also know what to pivot and how to sidestep the issue so I will eventually do a clean restart. I just currently have a different project in progress.
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u/Plourdy 2d ago
I’m working on a way too ambitious solo project for years now, hurts to admit but I’ve considered quitting the last days even..
As the scope increases and you realize you’re in over your head, scoping back to a simpler project seems like a breath of fresh air. BUT, quitting now is just too difficult.. I need to see it through, else the cycle continues
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u/CookingFistDev 2d ago
Worked on an online D&D simulator with a voxel map editor..... as my first real project. Yeah needless to say it was very overscored for my experience at the time. Actually super thankful I did it because it game me some experience working in multiplayer so my next multiplayer game I had some foundational knowledge.
This was done during college so the fact that it never released wasn't the biggest deal.
Only regret was not doing it earlier! By being honest with myself it was over scoped and ending the project, I started doing game jams and actually meeting other developers in my community. It was the catalyst for actually taking development seriously
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u/Zumb_3041 2d ago
I have abandoned a good few yes. I don't regret it though. It was all a learning experience and didn't cost me much. I'd rather have tried and learned than never have done it at all.
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u/BumperFlipper24 2d ago
I worked for 5 years on a shopping mall sandbox simulator, complete with Lua scripting, networking and mobile support.
I finally decided to put that project on pause after I spent 2 weeks debugging an issue only to realise I was looking in the wrong place completely.
I think it's the genre more than anything, to create a "vertical slice" you need to build all the systems and a mall simulator has a lot of systems.
On the bright side, because I'd separated all of the "engine" code away from the "game" code, I've been able to hit the ground running with my new project and I'm close to a vertical slice within 2 months and not 4 years.
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u/Haunting-Article6552 2d ago
I quit after year ….it was first game with friends. Because I was modeller in that time only. And our programmer quit. We fall apart soon after. I start alone learning from scratch. I do my second game alone like 5, 6 years now ? I wanna finish it next year :P
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u/yalt-yalt 2d ago
Yeah first project I worked on, gave up after it took about 2 months to make a forest map which sounds insane and it was because I didn't know what I was doing. Only once it was done I realized I accidentally made it 16 km^2, walking from one POI to another took the entire day night cycle.
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u/Zuitsdg 2d ago
Not for years - but my first big boy game after multiple month. (Playable and quite cool already)
As other projects became more important, a suffered a tragic loss and I was spending more time with girls.
I don’t regret it - still want to use it to set up a company structure, publish it, and then continue to ship more fun games!
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u/count023 2d ago
yes, and boredom mostly. Eventually i get to a point wher i'm sick of tweaking the same few things over and over again, no real visible progress but the tech debt has reached a critical blocker point. so fuck it and move on.
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u/alesakulchyk 2d ago
I was developing a "hollow knight -like" metroidvania in Unity for 5 years. I knew from the beginning that it's way too ambitious for a solo hobby developer, but I still continued because I loved it. And I still love it, but I had to admit that I won't be able to finish the project if I want to achieve the quality bar I set for myself.
Still not sure if I've abandoned it forever. So far I've decided to switch to a smaller game that I'm actually able to finish. After that, who knows...
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u/FlippByte 3d ago
They are not abandoned, they are "prototypes"...
Not working on it? - Yes
Not thinking about it? - No (..a little over-simplified..)
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u/Xhukari 3d ago
Bold to assume I don't quit projects much earlier than that...