I read recent 'Uncomfortable truth' post and the pinned comment, and now I wonder how intentionally people actually approaching game development.

To me the mood under the post feels a bit depressing. Though I agree with most points, I think it's not that bad if you're being strategic about your path?

I have a friend that does indie gamedev for a living. I should note that we come from a country where life cost is much lower, but still. I see him adapting studio direction, shifting genres to match what steam players want, and he's doing okay.

So I'm curious if you have any strategy on how to sustain yourself after the first release. Especially if you're somewhere in a midle of the development and wishlists are not looking exactly great.

My strategy

I'll share my personal strategy, not to say that it's an optimal one though! So I've previously worked on 2 games in a team as an artist contractor, and now I'm making my first solo indie game 'Parry the Bullet'

Initial idea was to reduce the development cost and reuse art from 'Dreamout' as-is. Basically just to make a Hotline-like shooter with existing art. I failed and ended up adapting it to better match the 'actiony' vibe of the game. It's still helps a lot to reuse the skills and the style.

I have to mention that although idea of reusing assets/skills was good, I think I've made a mistake. Hotline Miami (and similar games) audience to my understanding seeks for games where you are the cool guy that commits ultraviolence, and games in the niche look.. rather 'serious' and they mostly strict top-down. And my game looks cozy and is angled top-down, which is more like Cult of the Lamb. I thought it might be the hook, but apparently it's not.

I chose Hotline-like because it was the simplest game I could think of, and I thought I could make it in under a year. I'm at 1.5 years and 1500 hours mark now, and it's probably 4-6 months of work left. Might be more though, you know how it is.

As for next projects, I intent to heavily reuse both art and gameplay systems. Currently I plan to make 2-3 similar action games, reuse the controller and the art, but expand on the art and add something new to core gameplay. I hope that future projects will take 6 monts at most with experience and assets. I also plan to add more replayability features with each project, so
at one point I can make a roguelite on the same action-core, because according to Chris Z Steam players love replayable games.

I also consider trying to hop on the trend of incremental games as the second game, since it seems like the genre is even easier to make that what I'm making now, but chances to make profit are higher. But I think that's going to be some sort of actiony incremental game to still reuse skills and assets.