Hi! I am making the art for a 2D RPG. It will be Zelda Styled. I don’t want to pay someone an hourly rate to program, I just want an upfront payment. How much is reasonable for this type game. It is not huge.
“it is not huge” and “Zelda styled” are kinda at odds with one another.
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You would need far more detail than you posted before anyone could even start to make some kind of estimate.
–Eric
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Okay. Basically you have one main quest line which takes roughly 3-4 hours to complete and a few hours of side quests. The world is small, and roughly 6-9 dungeons. There are not too many items in the game and the items do not have any advanced mechanics. The combat is simple 8-bit Zelda style.
Lol, it is has Zelda style combat, and puzzle solving, but smaller world, quests, and not as many items and enemies.
That’s still a substantial amount of project to code for. This is by no means a small project.
How much are you thinking?
What about the graphics, is a green pixel enough for the main character? how about the sounds or the music? how many animations? do you need a map, monster and item editor. What type enemies and items are there? how many tile sets for worlds etc. etc. No one can give any kind of estimate when you are just talking hours of gameplay and saying things like “small world and not too many items”.
If you want a Zelda replica then make a prototype with 2D rpg maker or a detailed design document with everything explained.
It took the guys who made ittel dew 2, 2 years to make there game and they had 6 guys.So I think your underestimating how long its going to make.
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If I you what I have so far of the GDD do you think you could tell me how much I’d be looking at for someone to program it?
Unfortunately that doesn’t really help. You’d need to provide actual detail as to what exactly you want to have happen. However this is probably better posted as a topic in the commercial forum.
–Eric
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At least a year to complete, and with more than one person. Multiply that by hourly rate.
Your best bet is to stick with hourly rate and weekly/milestone payments. This way your programmer will be able to take your feedback and modify stuff. You don’t need to develop the game continuously, you can stop, pause for a week, and then resume development.
Estimating the time with information you provided is going to be very hard and might not even be possible. Basically with “pay for the whole thing” approach you may either end up overpaying by large margin, or ending up with half-finished product.
Core engine of the game may be quite simple, though under two months, but then someone else will have to make all the maps and all the sprites and all the music.
And yeah, prototyping in rpg maker may be a good idea.
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Have you looked into assets on the store which you could reskin with your own custom art?
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i think you are severly underestimating the time it takes to complete such an “easy” project
3-4 hours content only for the main questline is a lot, especially since this should be a main questline, so i guess you want every quest to be kind of unique and have some impact on the story ?
This. You are looking at anywhere between six months to two years to complete, depending on your exact scope. Do the math for labour rates from there.
You can get prototypes results much fast, but they won’t meet your spec.
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Or Game Maker. There are Zelda tutorial series out there. The OP might find it easy enough they can make their own code.
You could get a pile of crap up and running in a week or two.
Something good, that people will like playing - as mentioned above, 6mo absolute minimum, years is more likely.
If you don’t know how to program, do art or make games, triple all those figures and add 95% of giving up after you start to really understand whats involved. Or just hire someone to do the game design, and manage the production.
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Or just buy a copy of Zelda. That’s 30 or 40 bucks. Much cheaper. 
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Whats going to take the majority of the time is designing the bosses, puzzles, and enemies, making the gameplay flow is fun (not too easy/hard) make sure all your systems and combat mechanics work. Arrowx made a zelda game in 3 days but it didnt have any combat or anything.
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If you have $150k+ ready to spend, send me a PM with your idea and we can go from there.
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