u/Mundane_Region_7334

I've played card games my whole life (both physical and digital). And now I am building my own.

Game Dev is really hard. Especially multiplayer games. So I started my game as a single player game, and I really like it's current state. But I still miss player Vs player interaction, as in my daily life I often play multiplayer games, or other hobbies with other people.

I have experience with multiplayer games, so I decided to risk it and add it to my game.

I don't want to enter too deep into the game here, but it's already a mix of a few different genres(real time card game, open world, incremental...), not because I just wanted to mix them, but because I envisioned this from day 1.

Even though I think the game works well, and I am really enjoying it myself, I fear it might put some people away by the "weird" mix. That was the second main reason I was avoiding multiplayer until now.

I really want to hear from you guys: do you enjoy playing multiplayer games more? Does that pitch put you away?

Thank you!

First of all, I would like to apologize because this is a rant, but at the same time I really need true feedback, and to understand how everyone else feel about solo game dev.

I have been studying gamedev for over 5 years, and have been playing with Godot for over 3 years. And I want to clarify that I am only adressing, in this discussion, solo game dev, as professional game devs are a completely different perspective.

I am truly passionate about making games, but I am yet to published a commercial title. I work on personal projects on my free time, but over the last couple years I dedicated at least 6 daily hours for my personal projects.

My latest game demo was in the most polished state of any of my games so far, and I am currently waiting on the Steam documentation approval to build a steam page. The doubt started 4 days ago, when I published said demo to Itch... and...

It was a disaster.

17 downloads only, 161 views. at least 6 of those downloads are from friends of mine, and only 8 people (including me) actually played the game (from telemetry stats). None of the players played for more than 20 minutes.

This hit me really hard. Part of me want to believe Itch is not the right market for the game, because it's not web-based, and it is a bit more complex than the average Itch game. But then... I checked my local projects folder on my PC, and a second fact hit me really hard.

I have 78 projects, from 2023 until today alone. Almost one hundred ideas, prototypes, demos I never got to publish. Granted that a good chunk of this number aren't that well developed to be even playable, but a lot are.

I went further and checked my personal github profile. For the past 3 years I have an average of 1000 yearly contributions to my private repositories.

I am working really hard. I know I am not the only one, and that there are a LOT of other game devs working even harder than me. I want to believe I am improving. But it is really hard to realise I am yet to finish a commercial product.

That whole realization is making me doubt my game, and now I am not sure if I should even publish its' steam page anymore. Maybe I should begin another prototype. Maybe I should go back a step, and focus on developing my professional skills in Software Engineering.

Sorry to make you all read through this. If you have a similar story (as I am sure there are plenty) as mine, and are comfortable to share how you faced this and where you are now... that would be very helpful.

Thank you.

EDIT:

Wow. I had to leave for a few hours, and this post really blew up. Thank you everyone that took a minute to read my case and drop a word of advice, motivation or even critique. I will reply to every comment nonetheless.

Since a lot of people asked about it, and my comments with the link might get buried down in the comments, here's a link to my game. I appreciate any feedback.