I have two, sort of opposing, pieces of advice for people to consider.
Firstly, make lots of small games and game jams. This will help you learn the process of development and releasing but equally importantly, you will become acquainted with pleasing players and parsing feedback. Learning how players interpret games, watching them play your games, and reading the types of things they notice and don’t notice is crucial for making games that appeal to people.
Secondly, if you’ve done the first step well, you’ll have lots of people telling you “oh my god, you should make a full version of this game” or “I can totally see a full version of this on Steam.” These people’s intentions are good, and they’re excited about your game. I urge you to strongly consider the marketability, market fit, and game design before committing to making a full game. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype, but not every 5-minute experience can be adequately translated into a 2-hour experience for example. Likewise for games that fit a jam theme really well, but don’t necessarily make sense in a vacuum. Those two examples are only a small sampler of how things can go wrong when bringing a game jam entry to Steam.
After nearly 5 years of making games part-time, I feel like I’ve only learned a small fraction of what the medium has to offer. I heard something a while back, can’t remember from where that resonated with me in regards to learning. I’ll paraphrase it for you: “You can know the name of something, but it doesn’t mean you know anything about it.”
To contextualize that into a game development conversation, people mention game feel, juice, routes to market, reviews, etc. But do they know how to excel in those? Truly excel? Very few do if you ask me.
Keep learning and keep questioning your assumptions, and wherever possible, lean on others’ expertise to avoid costly mistakes.
-Viktor
Explory Story on Steam
❤️