I’m Nathan, a solo developer working on Unbowed, a pirate-inspired Soulslike with cosmic horror and sanity mechanics. The game is heavily influenced by titles like Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls.
You can check out the Steam page here and play the demo today. Thanks for taking a look.
I’m about a year into building a Soulslike (UE5, blueprint-heavy), currently in the playtesting/polish phase before a demo. I haven’t shipped yet, but I wanted to share a few things that actually mattered during my first year of solo dev.
- Momentum is more deterministic than motivation. You can't always control your motivation levels as there are so many outside factors that can influence this. What you can control is momentum, which in turn feeds into motivation levels. Something as simple as working on your project at least 5 minutes most days can snowball.
- Self-care is productive. There will be days where you don't work on your game, and that is okay. Taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally, is progress even if invisible. Burnout will cost you more dev time in the long run as it can lead to poor decisions.
- Scope control is a daily decision. I’ve cut multiple systems (or simplified them heavily) just to keep momentum. It’s less about one big cut and more about constantly asking “does this actually make the game better right now?” A focused game will always be better than a deep game when developing solo.
- Planning is often avoidance. This isn't always the case, but when I slip into planning or brainstorming sessions, it's often because I'm avoiding something difficult. Momentum comes from visible progress, and can often be stalled by organizing and planning.
- Your skill ceiling is not the limiting factor. You’ll learn what you need as you go. The real constraints are time and budget, and most hard decisions come from those, not from what you’re capable of learning.
- Not all feedback is equal. Knowing who your audience is becomes important when playtesting or otherwise processing feedback. It's never easy to hear negatives about something you poured yourself into, but being able to filter out noise and focus on the concerns of your core audience will help your game improve rather than chip away at your mental health.
If you’re building something that started as an idea in your head, you’re already further than most. Stick with it!