u/IndieIsland

so this post contradicts the one i made 2 weeks ago where i was preaching "scope discipline" and "ship rough is the way" and stuff.

heres the thing.

3 months ago i was sick on a saturday. couldnt code anything serious. so i did this dumb thing : i prototyped a feature i had NEVER planned. you carry a portable radio in rastignac. anton talks to you on it (anton is the voice in your ear during runs). i had the static and the random transmission stuff baked in. but i added something stupid for fun : a radio scan feature where you could turn a dial mid-run and pick up "ghost transmissions". leftover broadcasts from other rastignacs (= other players, fictional) who died in the wasteland.

5 hours of code. half-broken at the time. just a sad weekend project.

i shipped it to my playtest group as a hidden easter egg.

every single one of them found it. every single one of them said it was the BEST part of the game. some played extra runs just to find new ghost transmissions. the system is now a core mechanic with 47 fictional transmissions written.

im confused as a dev. on paper the system was outside scope, unsupported by my pitch, distracted from the core loop. by every solo dev rule i tell myself, i should have cut it. instead it became the soul of the game.

so for the people who preach discipline AND for the people who say "follow your gut" : how do you tell the difference, in the moment, between scope creep and a feature you actually need to make ? because im 3 years in and i still cant tell.

Hey r/SoloDevelopment,

I'm 6 weeks from launching a tool aimed at solo devs and small studios on Steam. Before I sink another sprint into it I want to gut-check with the people it's for.

Quick context: I've already scraped the full Steam catalog (every game, tags, reviews, release dates, prices, languages, etc.) — so the tool isn't a one-page-at-a-time view, it queries across the whole catalog. That's what makes the "which niches are growing vs saturated" view possible.

The idea, in one paragraph: You paste a Steam tag combo (e.g. "roguelike + deckbuilder") or a competitor's URL. You get back: how many games shipped in that niche over the last 12 months, median review counts (i.e. rough sales floor via Boxleiter), top 10 by estimated revenue, under-used tag combos, and a "saturation vs demand" score computed across the full catalog. Plus aggregate views — fastest-growing genres, most oversaturated tag combos, where the gaps are right now. And an AI pass on your own Steam page (description, tags, capsule) suggesting 3 prioritized fixes.

Pricing I had in mind: free tier with a couple analyses/month, $9/mo for ~unlimited, $29/mo if you want bulk competitor radar.

What I genuinely want to know:

1. Is "is my niche viable" a real decision moment for you, or do you just build what you want and figure marketing out later?
2. What do you use today — SteamDB, Gamalytic, VG Insights, GameDiscoverCo, spreadsheets, nothing? What do they miss?
3. Would aggregate "trending vs saturated niches" views actually change a project decision for you, or is it just a curiosity?
4. Would you pay $9-$29/mo for this, or is "free Steam search + 30 min of manual digging" already good enough?
5. Brutally — what's the one feature that would make this a "yes" vs a "meh"?

If the honest answer is "nobody needs this, the data is already free," I'd rather hear it now than after launch. No link, not trying to sell you anything — just trying to decide whether to finish the build.

so this is a confession post. ive been carrying a bug in stone tribes for like 22 months. small but persistent. every time i pick up the game to do polish i go "this time im fixing it" and i never do.

what it is : in the tutorial level, if you build a specific sequence of buildings in a specific order (which happens like 5% of runs), the resource counter freezes for 8 seconds before unfreezing on its own. game doesnt crash. you just see your numbers stop, then unfreeze. no functional impact past the visual confusion.

ive spent maybe 20 hours total trying to track it down across the 22 months. cant find the cause. its some race condition between the resource event bus and the ui repaint. i think.

heres the thing : im about to ship stone tribes 1.0 with this bug still in. and ive made peace with it.

reasons i settled :

• 95% of players will never trigger it
• the 5% will be momentarily confused, not actually harmed
• 20h of dev time to fix is roughly 20h NOT spent on rastignac which actually has revenue potential
• and honestly i think the bug builds character now. its like a friend.

dont think im rationalizing here, i think im growing up as a dev. the perfectionist version of me 5 years ago would have spent 80 more hours chasing this. now i ship and move on.

anyone else has a "friend bug" they ship anyway ? im curious how solo devs deal with the 20% of bugs that take 80% of the time.

posting this as a question. context first then question.

ive got two solo gamedev projects, both pretty close to the finish line.

stone tribes (3 years of work, rts/automation, 211 wishlists, demo out) rastignac wastelands (2 years of work, solo extraction shooter, 227 wishlists, demo coming)

the wishlists are low. ill be honest, i barely promoted either of them. its not a mystery.

ive made the call to ship both rough rather than spend more months polishing. a few reasons : saas work pays my rent now and takes most of my hours, the polish-to-wishlist conversion seems weak at this scale, and i need closure more than i need a perfect launch.

so im on the trajectory of "ship two solo games at end of dev knowing neither will break out, then move on".

heres my actual question for the people whove already done this :

was it worth shipping vs leaving the project unfinished forever? did the act of releasing make a difference even if the numbers stayed low? did anyone surprise themselves with a slow-burn pickup over the months after launch?

and the harder one : did you regret shipping rough? did you wish you had taken the extra 6 months to polish, or were you glad you put the time elsewhere?

not looking for sympathy, just trying to learn from people who already walked the same path. genuinely curious how it played out 1-2 years after release.

sharing this for any other solo dev going through the same transition because ive looked for posts like this and its surprisingly hard to find honest writeups.

5 years of solo gamedev. 2 projects.

stone tribes : 3 years, rts/automation, demo out, 211 wishlists, planning 1.0 in a few weeks rastignac wastelands : 2 years, solo extraction shooter, polish phase, demo soon, 227 wishlists

so 440 wishlists total, both pretty quiet, lifetime steam revenue 0$ on both. ill be transparent on this, the numbers are bad. partly genre choice, partly because i barely promoted either of them.

8 months ago i started building small saas products on the side because rent. nothing big, but they actually generate revenue. way more than the games. and once that started working, the math on my time changed.

heres what im doing now :

i committed to finishing both games. stone tribes ships rough as 1.0, no rebuilding the first 5 minutes of the demo even though the median play time was 7 minutes (yeah). rastignac ships its demo as soon as the loop is solid, then 1.0 a few months later. neither will get the polish year they could have had if i was full time.

im not starting a third gamedev project. saas is my main work focus now.

the gamedev work becomes a hobby. ill finish what i started but stop treating gamedev as my career path. some side prototypes maybe, but no more 2-3 year solo projects.

the part that surprised me was how mentally clarifying this is. for years i was dragging both games slowly because i was telling myself the next polish pass would unlock something. once you accept that the next pass wont change the wishlist trajectory by an order of magnitude, shipping rough becomes the obvious move.

the part that still hurts is closure. theres no nice farewell to gamedev when no one is watching the door. you just stop. its weird.

anyone else lived this? did the games keep selling slowly post-launch even with no marketing? did you ever come back to gamedev after the saas thing started paying? curious.

need real solo dev advice on this one. trying to make a tactical call not a philosophical one.

context. ive been doing solo gamedev for 5 years, two projects, both close to the finish line.

stone tribes : rts/automation hybrid. 3 years of work. demo released last year. 211 wishlists. retail keys distributed but no public sale yet. 1.0 is achievable in a few weeks of cleanup.

rastignac wastelands : solo extraction shooter. 2 years in, polish phase, demo coming soon. 227 wishlists. 1.0 a few months after demo if it picks up.

so 440 wishlists total between the two. low. but here is what changed for me lately.

i started building small saas products on the side ~8 months ago and theyre actually generating revenue. way more than the games will probably ever bring in. so my available gamedev hours dropped from like 30/week to maybe 10. i have to choose what i invest in.

option A : ship both rough. stone tribes 1.0 with current scope, dont rebuild anything. rastignac demo as soon as its playable, skip the perfectionist polish, get it in front of people fast.

option B : invest 2-3 more months on each, polish them harder, hope wishlists climb before launch.

ill be honest. ive been leaning option A. partly because saas takes my best brain hours now, and partly because i think the difference between "rough but shipped" and "polished but never out" is way bigger than the difference between rough and polished. id rather have closure on both projects than another year of grinding for incremental gains.

but ive also seen a lot of solo devs ship rough, regret it for years. so im second guessing.

for those of you who shipped your last solo project at the end of dev, knowing it wasnt going to break out commercially : did you ship rough or did you polish more? and looking back, would you have made the same call?

Vous conseillez quoi comme metier pour me reorienter ? Je suis dev deouis 10 ans maintenant jen ai marre jai eu des entretiens mais ca aboutit pas jai limpression que cest fini le marché est mort j'aurai du garder mon dernier cdi maintnenant la question est peut etre trop generale mais vous me conseillerez quoi comme voie de reorientation ? Je sais faire que du dev , a part ca conduire haha autant je fais chauffeur lol