Moonman: 3 Years of Solo Gamedev and 2 Left to Go
3 years ago I started working on a game called Moonman -- a procedurally-generated adventure game.
I posted here two years ago with my blog entry "The Last 2 Years" ( http://bp.io/post/1501 ). 18 months later and I'm still working on the game by myself. I'm now in my final days of a Kickstarter campaign aimed to help fund one more year before the public release ( http://kck.st/1DElnw3 ) and I'm happily on track to reach the goal.
It's taken me 3 years of solid development before I felt comfortable to launch a Kickstarter, and I'm excited to be able to finally hire an additional person to work on my game. The game will take one more year before a public release and then probably another year after that to fix bugs, do the console ports, etc. Here's a visual history of the last 3 years ( http://imgur.com/a/NnEmN ).
I never would have thought I would be working on one game for 5 years, but I understand now that these things take time. Instead of thinking of it as one long project, it helps to think of it as a series of prototypes -- each one building on from the last and getting better along the way. After a few grim periods of uncertainty and depression, I'm finally feeling pretty proud of where it is going.
The best thing about this whole Kickstarter campaign is the great support from the whole gamedev community. I've been tweeted by Notch, chatted briefly to Vlambeer, received a shout-out from Ron Gilbert, and have spoken to many other awesome gamedevs.
There are a lot of solo gamedevs out there, and I'm sure there are also a lot of solo start-ups. If you've been working alone for years on something and are unsure about its future then I hope my little story assures you that long-term persistence can pay off. I've still got a long way to go but excited to enter this next stage in my gamedev career.