I'm Paul, the lead on Coco's Revenge, I've been making games as a hobby for roughly 8 years, and been Professional for 3 of those before quitting to work on a project I wanted to work on (Coco's Revenge)
Coco's Revenge is a precision platformer but you're a physics breaking bunny. The story revolves around a bunny attempting to save the sky from the evil Dr. Wily Fox. You can rotate the stage with the aid of a fairy and have the ability to phase thorugh positive and negative space.
I was bored during covid and done a game jam which did not go well but the prgrammer art lead me to looking at the black and white aestetic of the game and wondering if I could figure out a way of creating a mechanic that reacts to collisions based on colour. and then I forgot about it until I quit my job last year.
The journey has been fun if a little nerve wrecking as I left a somewhat stable job to chase an idea. My nerves eased when I went to a couple of expo events and saw people really liking the game as well as receiving positive messages and emails from players and industry veterans who played the game. Made me feel a little bit vindicated for my choices.
I chose Unity as I didn't want to have to deal with porting to other systems or spend time making an engine.
The biggest hurdle has to be time, as essentially being a solo dev outside of commissioning pieces, I find myself spread too thin. This game I'm making even back in the SNES days would have been done by a team of people, so it's really driven home the concept of man hours for me. Outside of that, I'm in no rush to get the game out but it really makes me wonder what it could be with a full time team.
Just make something really. There's no one size fits all advice for game dev.
Just find something that works for you. If you wanna make art, make art, same for music and programming. It goes for any creative field.
If you want to make a full game do it, if you're bored of it, no one says you have to finish and release, you do you.
Just have fun until you gain enough experience or are passionate enough to see a project through until the end.
Don't force yourself if you're tired or uninspired, as a consumer we can tell, and as a dev, your health and relationships comes first.
Look after yourself, enjoy the journey and don't stress youself out. We all do it because we love games or want to see a certain game made. Also feel free to follow us on X or Bluesky if you want to follow our development of Coco's Revenge.
https://x.com/Cocos__Revenge
https://bsky.app/profile/cocosrevenge.bsky.social
Paul
