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

News & General Discussion
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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.

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.

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

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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?

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Would probably put Banished up there.

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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.

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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

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

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/3y2kmr/best_games_developed_by_a_solo_developer/?sort=new

Banished is kind of spartan but looks fairly nice.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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some other interesting solo dev games,
http://manifold.garden/ *watch his stream to see what real solo dev is about :smile: Twitch

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

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

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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. :slight_smile:

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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?

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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.

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