I might be interested, but this group sounds too "serious" for me. Ie i'm serious, but i have a full time job, and i'm obsessive so i'm yakshaving the foundations of my projects. I'm less concerned with the final game, and more concerned with building a platform that helps me efficiently create.

While the game is my goal, i focus on the platform because i feel solo devs have a ton of overhead. I figure if i can optimize my the creative aspects of my work i will have better long term success. Point being, i am interested in this space but not in pushing X game out the door asap. I expect my first/second/third/etc games to be failures, stepping stones. I'm here for the journey. With an eye on burnout.

So i suspect my approach may not be focused enough for your group. As right not i'm working on archival and automation of creative pipelines moreso than games.

https://itch.io

Itch is a great indie game community where individual developers are easily share/sell their games.

I took 3 months off last year to get a game project finished up and released to Steam! Glad to see other indie developers here on Hacker News. I can't commit to weekly meetups, since I'm back at my job full-time, but I wish you the best of luck on your game!

Semi off-topic (?), but I'm a developer and researcher working on moving into game audio and composition. This may or may not be amenable to solo devs (depending on where you feel game resources fall), but I'm looking for games to produce audio/music for so I can gain more experience! Some composition examples are on my SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/superlumic. Can also provide some small demos including actual gameplay.

Also, for non-solo folks, I have some game programming experience and am comfortable implementing audio [or figuring it out on platforms I haven't used] and would be happy to chat about possible collaborations. :) Email in profile.

I don't know if I'm what you're looking for but I recently quit my job to take some time and work on projects for myself. I've budgeted at least a year to see how things go. I've spent the last 20 years in the web space and honestly tired of it.

I've spent a lot of time adjacent to games in my free time, doing reversing/modding/speedrunning tools. I'm currently learning Godot and plan to jump into development hard next week working on a rogue-like platformer, in a similar vein to Spelunky.

FWIW, the programming section on twitch often has solo devs working away on projects. You should check that out too.

I think this is related to one:

Technical overview of Kandria, a game and game engine developed in Common Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32043026 - July 2022 (32 comments)

I own Planimeter. We publish Planimeter Game Engine 2D, which was previously called Grid Engine 9.[1]

I spend a lot of time thinking about how independent developers can better spend their time. A lot of developers get caught up in design documents, or thinking about how they want to make a game, but not seriously understanding how many hours a week you need to commit to a project and over how many years.

As a rule of thumb, about 20 hours a week over a period of multiple years dedicated to a single project seems to bisect game developers into categories of those who are productive and those who aren't.

We have had conversations with different developers in communities, like LÖVE's, for instance:

Surprisingly, many developers aren't interested in serious commercial efforts. A lot of them fixate over matters that don't make significant product impact. As an example, there's some sort of "ECS" fad going on right now. Years ago there was some sort of "push/pop game state" fad.

Professional game engines aren't built this way, so I have no idea where these fads originate from.

We are a group of former Source Engine contractors, game technology developers, and designers. We have written some articles on embedding Lua, multiplayer game networking, and introducing a CSS 2.1 compositor into game engines, among other things.

I'm interested in having conversations with other game developers, and as a like to have, we love talking with those who have written significant pieces of software in the open source community.

As a crude ballpark, a measure of "significant" might be any repository with over 75 stars, or development of a technique that is novel in game software, etc.[2]

[1]: https://github.com/Planimeter/game-engine-2d

[2]: https://github.com/andrewmcwattersandco/github-statistics

Wish you all the best on completing your city builder game!

Last year I started my own indie studio. [1] The game I have released right now, is an interactive fiction game. Its pretty short - just 15 minutes. I originally created it because I wanted to release a game jam project I had been working on. A first person 3D adventure set in a retro inspired world that was evolving as you played. I ran into a lot of problems because I realized I architect-ed the game poorly in Godot.

But thankfully messing around in Godot leveled up my skills there, so I've been hard at work on a new game. I am trying to launch it right on steam. I'm not really ready to show this one off to the public just yet.

Its honestly been pretty challenging doing all this by myself, I've been trying to release a commercial-grade game since I was maybe like 12 (I am now in my late 20s).

For the other solo developers in this thread, its absolutely hard, but don't burn yourself out, and don't forget about the world around you. Its tempting to pour every single waking moment into your work. Sometimes taking a step back is enough to solve that issue you've been having in your game's logic.

[1] For the Heart, For the Soul - https://heartsoulgames.itch.io/

Yes, I'm interested in writing a game centered on non-voxel procedural generation, in an single open world, online, in low poly, with networking split on multiple servers per square area, to allow creators to submit their content for some sort of theme park for players.

I've learned a lot, but being solo is a massive obstacle for motivation and funding.

I guess there are a lot of wannabee game developers like me.

This is kind of history repeating itself. I recall Sim City was "discovered" during a weekly game developer meet up in the 1980s:

https://web.archive.org/web/19991012021220/http://gamespot.c...

Howdy, here are a bunch of communities that I shoot the gamedev breeze with asynchronously:

- https://twitter.com/IndieLegion

- https://howtomarketagame.com/ Discord

- https://twitter.com/gamediscoverco Plus subscription's Discord

- Godot Engine's Discord

I've connected more deeply with some of the folks I've met on there, so it hasn't felt lonely at all.

I'm also doing an indie dev masters via Falmouth, and my cohort meet up weekly (and we have a Discord for daily chatter), and it's a great community, but I'm not sure if that will last past graduation in a few weeks.

(I'm on the marketing video super cringe)

https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/study/online/postgraduate/indie-g...

Not a full-time developer, but I have been struggling with developing my first game a lot as a side project next to a regular day-job. It's already in a kind-of beta state (https://yare.io), but still far from finished and would love to be part of such group!

This is a good idea. Thanks for posting about it.

It does get lonely. I'm a former YC founder and I left Apple earlier this year to be a solo game dev. Making games (compared to apps or tools) is especially hard because "fun" is so nebulous that "make something people want" is a blurry goal at best.

I also work on my own tools and I'm using them to build the game. I'm very interested in tools that help a very small but talented team (1-4 people) build ambitious games more successfully.

I post progress here if anyone's interested: http://twitter.com/kineticpoet

Half-OT:

Anyone got pointers to game engines for solo devs?

Something to get 2D multiplayer games out of the door quickly.

Our company is building a community for solo devs and small teams around the Godot game engine. We’re a few months away from launching, but I’d love to hear what indie devs would want in a community and what resources would speed up their development (email is in profile). We’ll have tutorials, game templates, and art assets to that will help people get started. We’re also sponsoring open source plugins and tools for Godot. Let me know if you know of a deserving project to support!

I don't know if this might interest you but if you have a browser-based game my cousin is a PM at https://www.sportsbook-software.com and they're looking for basically anything that can be monetized using a stake/rewards model, eg if you can add a game room to your game with support for small transactions you'll be making a killing.

Been working on various unreal engine projects since ~2016, but always as hobby (already full time @ own company). Managed to get a multiplayer alpha up and running of a prop hunt inspired game, mainly to play with friends (which was a huge blast for a little while).

Tried to convince some fellow colleagues and friends to dive in to indie game dev and make something together, but so far with little success ;)

Would love to meetup with fellow hobbyist's!

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I have like 60% of a game ready, but it's in the fridge while I finish some other projects. I intend to release it on a game console but I don't have the time to work on it right now. As many people here have said, I work a full time job as well. I would like to join, but I don't now if I'll have the time for the meetings.

I am in my late 50s, and don’t take things quite as seriously as I once did. But seriously, I would like to release some games!

Not me, someone kinda made this https://old.reddit.com/r/france/comments/wfe89a/il_y_a_un_an... (warning: french)

here's a solo game project I just stopped working on, a short puzzle-platformer: https://jordanorelli.itch.io/the-seal

It has a full game loop but is very small. It takes 10-30 minutes to play through depending on how quickly you see through the puzzles. Right now I only have a Windows build :\

I worked on that for a few months full time, but have to get back to earning an income so I'm not working on it at the moment, interviewing instead. I did the game design MFA program at DePaul to find a group of people to learn to make games with, it was a lot of fun. I think without doing a program like that I would have wound up yak shaving in circles and making a bunch of tools instead of ever making any games.

I'm a solo game developer! I love working on games in Unity and PlayCanvas. Thanks for starting this thread.

One thing I'm constantly surprised by and grateful for, is the enormous amount a solo dev can do on top of today's stacks and tools. And it's only going to get easier (I hope).

https://wdpauly.medium.com/fall-update-empire-and-revolution... Yea I'll email you

I've been making games (mostly solo) as a hobby for a little over ten years. It's been fun! I'm currently working on a blog post to document every single project I've started

Hey I've been developing a game by myself for the past 7 months. Would love to be a part of your community to share ideas and contribute. Thanks!

Good Luck! I'm interested in game development as a side hobby to bond with my kids. I'd be interested in more of a hobby oriented meetup.

I’ve always wanted to make a game ever since I was little but I made the wise decision of trying to make a game engine first :) (in profile)

Something like this might have saved my game that I burned out on while trying to solo dev during the pandemic. Love the idea!

If you join devs of Egregoria and A/B Street you can create a support group dedicated to city builders :)

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