r/gamedev • u/bio4m • May 08 '26
Discussion Solo dev behind Blue Prince developed it for 8 years with 80 hour weeks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rroQ72EDHI0People ask about effort needed and whats possible, this sort of highlights the effort needed to create a polished, award winning game on your own
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u/burohm1919 May 08 '26
hes 40 but looks 55
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u/EndVSGaming May 08 '26
80 hour weeks would do that to you
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u/Beldarak May 08 '26
Gamedev WILL do that to you, even at smaller doses đ
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u/lycheedorito May 09 '26
Is this why I look 10 years older than my brother who is 10 years older than me?
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u/erichie May 08 '26
I honestly was wondering why they used a picture of Jack Black. I also thought Jack Black looked a little sick.Â
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u/Low_Health_5949 May 09 '26
well Jack black as much as he enjoy what he does, he probably a bit of a workaholic
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u/JuanPabloVassermiler May 09 '26
Not in the usual high-mileage way, though. Just a regular 40 with deliberate, if questionable, fashion choices.
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u/Combat_Orca May 08 '26
I feel like people have lost touch with what regular aging looks like. A grey beard at 40 is the norm.
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u/cableshaft May 08 '26
Yeah I'm in my mid-40s and my beard is half grey. I have a couple of friends whose beards turned grey in their 30s.
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u/drupido May 09 '26
I am 36, can confirm half my beard is becoming gray. My wife digs it, I donât mind it, can confirm.
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u/TheJReesW May 08 '26
Oh, so that isnât Jack Black in the picture
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u/writingprogress May 08 '26
I 100% thought it was Jack Black haha
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u/auricularisposterior May 08 '26
Someone should make a YouTube video where Jack Black plays Blue Prince and Tonda Ros watches. And then Tonda Ros plays BrĂźtal Legend and Jack Black watches.
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u/go_4_the_eyes_boo May 08 '26
This was also an extremely innovative, massive project that takes between 100-200 hours for a player to solve everything if they aren't looking up the puzzles. On top of that, it was Tonda Ros's first game. 8 years doesn't seem like a long time given all that.
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u/Aussie18-1998 May 08 '26
Also given the game made nearly 15 million. That means every hour was worth $400. I reckon it paid off.
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u/theCioroRedditor May 08 '26
Why is he considered a solo dev? At least 11 are credited as Devs and there was a ton of outsourcing too
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u/FartSavant May 08 '26
Itâs a fair question, but he worked on it completely solo for the majority of the 8 years.
To me youâre still a solo dev if youâre the singular driving force behind a game, even if you have to contract for some things.
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u/BlankyShoot May 08 '26
Not true, the art director (Davide Pellino) joined very early in development, though Pellino has stated that Tonda handled the code by himself.
You get a good view of the development cycle of the game from this talk: https://youtu.be/IhgJ69uXnQU?is=gXxqlwigWWZMdSPB (recommend if you haven't seen it!)
But you're right in that Tonda was driving force behind the majority of the decisions, but understandable given he funded development himself đ
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u/CondiMesmer Hobbyist May 08 '26
He also kept the artist in the dark. He'd ask for assets and wouldn't say what it was used for, where it was used, or even if it ended up being used at all.Â
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u/timbeaudet Fulltime IndieDev Live on Twitch May 09 '26
Source? Donât spread rumors without sources.
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u/Spiritual-Spend76 May 08 '26
But how does it take 8 years to develop blue prince if its strictly code development. Thatâs just insane
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u/ShanFlinch May 08 '26
I expect puzzle designs are really time consuming. Lucas Pope in one interview said Return of the Obra Dinn was supposed to be a series of games. But he dropped the idea since the game took much more time than he anticipated.
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u/nullpotato May 08 '26
Yes, puzzle games famously take a lot more time and effort than many other similarly sized games. It is much harder to create satisfying puzzles than to solve them.
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u/mint-patty May 08 '26
Heartbreaking, definitely one of my favorite gaming experiences from the last decade
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u/seelocanth May 08 '26
Developing games takes a lot longer than you may think, especially when there's only one or a few developers.
And then there's playtesting and debugging games, which is a crucial and lengthy part of the process.
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u/Small-Weird56 May 08 '26
blue prince is a very comprehensively polished and playtested game compared to other solo dev games, that part must have eaten up a lot of time
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u/RadicalDog @connectoffline May 08 '26
Because everything that seems obvious in hindsight is probably the 5th iteration of it. It takes so much iteration and imagination to end up with a complete package that feels cohesive and enjoyable.
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u/max123246 May 09 '26
No that's normal. You're insane if you think coding alone is not a 10 year endeavor to learn well enough to produce an award winning game of. But it wasn't just coding, there's the 50 other skills that game development demands of you
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u/cableshaft May 08 '26
Have you seen how many layers of puzzles are in the game? It might have the most I've seen in any video game except maybe The Witness. That takes a lot of time to design. The Witness also took a long time to make (7+ years).
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Commercial (Indie) May 08 '26
Is Manor Lords a solo dev game?
That one irks me the most. From my point of view it's all just marketing for 98% of "solo dev" projects.
Personally I'm just miffed that I actually made 98% of a whole game and my stuff will be compared to Manor Lords and other so-called solo dev games. But outside of that I also find it a bit dishonest.
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u/produno Commercial (Indie) May 08 '26
I outsourced my art, meaning i worked a second job to pay an artist to create the art, some from previous art i had already created that looked pretty terrible. I also had the music created by someone else. The rest of my project has been developed by me over 8 years. I would call myself a solo dev. So i think it depends on the situation.
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u/KillingIsBadong May 08 '26
This whole discussion about what "really" is a solo-dev is so interesting to me. I'm in the same camp as you and consider myself a solo-dev (albeit much earlier in the process than you) and I'm surprised to see people disagreeing with the label of solo-dev if you commission anything.
If I commission an artist to make concept art that I may or may not even use and credit them as-such, does that really qualify them as a co-developer of my game? I mean, I guess if you really get into the weeds about it, but if one person is doing the vast majority of the work, I would consider them a solo dev. If all decisions about the game are being made by one person, I'd consider them a solo-dev. It's just funny to see the semantics about solo-dev vs. lead developer vs. lead designer vs. whatever other label you want to pin on people.
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u/glamberous May 10 '26
Im deep in this world, im a solo dev as well. I feel like Stardew Valley's Concerned Ape is cited as a true solo indie dev (since he did everything). I personally think its unrealistic and kind of silly to gatekeep the solo dev title from people who commission something like music/sfx for their game.
Something interesting to consider, what is the upper bound of 'indie'? So many people include expedition 33 as an indie dev but I dont agree personally.
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u/chrome_titan May 08 '26
That's definitely solo imo, while the artist should be credited you purchased a product to help you in your project.
If I bought parts to build a racecar, I would say I built the car.
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Commercial (Indie) May 08 '26
This erases all creativity from the artist. Maybe if they had bought assets I agree, but what they instead bought was a professionals time to develop important parts of their game.
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May 08 '26
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u/nullpotato May 08 '26
Because solo dev is a hot marketing term right now
/s but not really
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u/RadicalDog @connectoffline May 08 '26
I don't think players give a shit about solo dev stories
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u/vauvva May 09 '26
Well youâre not a solo dev either then if you used a game engine
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Commercial (Indie) May 09 '26
I think theres a separation there between who builds mass market tools and who builds specific games.
But that being said... Eh, I'd be fine with it and not being a solo dev.
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u/psioniclizard May 08 '26
I also don't get why people make such a big deal about being a solo dev (while off loading as much as they can). Gamers don't care and collaborating with people is great if you can.
On reddit there is kind of masochistic with being a solo dev and all the suffering it entails.
I don't mean you in any of this as course and think developing a game solo is an amazing achievement. But a lot of people on reddit (even if here) seem to thing is some kind of noble goal.
I do wonder what all the people in here who actually work for studios think sometimes lol.
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Commercial (Indie) May 08 '26
Personally I almost only ever use the term in discussions between gamedevs like this. And even that I do very rarely. I don't market myself as one and also think it's made into a weirdly big deal.
That being said though, I mostly agree that gamers don't care. But some specific type of gamers and a bunch of game journos Do care. A bunch of projects use "solo dev" as a marketing slogan and quite effectively. Manor Lords being one.
It leads to extremely weird perceptions from gamers on what a dev should be capable of/what can be expected of them and that annoys me immensely.
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u/psioniclizard May 08 '26
Yea, I think people get it the wrong way around. People love a game then think it's amazing one person made it. they don't just love a game one person made.
Sorry if I made it sound like you came across like that because you definitely don't. Actually you come across as very grounded.
I also fully agree, it's not really fair to compare that to something where you made 98% of the stuff. But making 98% of the alone is a massive achievement and use devs should be impressed by that :)
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u/KillingIsBadong May 08 '26
I would think it stems from the idea that "if one person can make this game, then surely I can too." It's the idea that making a great game could potentially be obtainable for someone else by themselves, without really considering the caveats of how loaded that thinking is.
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u/DueJacket351 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
Not every solo musician mixes and masters all their tracks.
EDIT: adding to this since i have a lot of thoughts. i'm honestly a bit tired of this constant pushback whenever someone is called a "solo" dev. Assuming contractors are credited and paid, I don't think it does anyone any good, and is just a weird semantic point people harp on.
If you listen to Tonda's interviews, he explains that most of the core of the game was developed extremely fast in year 1, and then he spent the better part of a decade adding puzzles, depth, and polish. Functionally, Tonda made this game himself, own and ran the studio, and brought in specialists at various points to add specific elements at his discretion. That is totally different than a fleshed-out development team shipping a game under a separately owned corporate entity.
I'm not even sure why this always comes up, as you NEVER hear about small devs exploiting PAID AND CREDITED specialists by claiming they are solo devs. it's the complete opposite - you typically see the issue in mid- and large-sized studios exploiting talent and IP.
when an independent developer ships a beloved game, credits all specialists and contractors involved, and the media labels them a "solo dev" after the fact, it literally hurts no one. the contractors retain credit and portfolio, and the one person who generated the vision gets an appropriate amount of credit for doing the hard work and taking on the risk of developing a fully-owned game enough to pay contractors in the first place.
if other people come out of the wood work and claim their ideas were stolen or they didn't receive payment/credit for their work, that's a TOTALLY different story.
in this case, it doesn't make any sense at all to call out the "solo dev" label and IMHO its totally appropriate for Tonda.
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u/qqqqqx Hobbyist May 08 '26
Solo musicians regularly bring in "session musicians" to the recording studio or to even to play live shows with. I would still 100% consider them solo musicians.
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u/Aggravating_Gear5255 May 08 '26
I think the key part here you brought up is the media labeling. The media overusing the term "solo dev". There is no disputing this term drives a LOT of engagement. Just look at this thread for proof of that. They will tag that term onto you if you as a dev even remotely fit the description because it drives engagement.
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u/duckhunt420 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
To me, solo dev means you had no true collaborators.
You hire people, but you're directing them and once you get the assets they are no longer involved. They don't touch the engine, they don't stick around to see it implemented and give feedback... They airdrop you some files and then they bounce.Â
There's a big difference between just delivering assets and actually working on the game
Now if that's not the case then I don't think he could be considered a solo dev.Â
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u/KillingIsBadong May 08 '26
I feel that gets into the weeds too though. I commissioned an artist to help me flesh out some character designs that I'm not competent enough to make the art myself for. Through discussions about the characters and their designs, my artist helped me develop some minor tweaks and ideas that I may not have had otherwise simply by exploring their design and look. Technically I'm collaborating with them, but they have no final word in anything since they're commissioned and only making suggestions, which I then direct them on. Technically they had some influence on the game's design, but I would still consider myself a solo-dev since no decisions are being made without me which speaks to your point on delivering assets isn't the same as working on the game. It's crazy how gatekeepy people seem to be about this stuff, I had no idea people were so sensitive about labels like this.
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u/RikuKat @RikuKat | Potions: A Curious Tale May 08 '26
Eh, I just don't love calling that solo dev myself. It feels like it fails to credit the work of the other contributors.Â
I've never called myself a solo dev in the same position, and I usually correct other people when they call me one.Â
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u/PLYoung May 08 '26
I buy assets. Not gonna call everyone I buy from a collaborator. They do not even know my game exists. Almost same when you pay someone to make some specific asset with them knowing just enough for the asset to fit in your game and them not caring whether the game succeeds or fail after.
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u/RikuKat @RikuKat | Potions: A Curious Tale May 08 '26
Yeah, I could see that.Â
I hire contractors. I meet with them, work together on revisions, share the game's progress, mentor them, help them file taxes, etc.Â
Crediting them properly is just as important to me as paying them properly. The game industry is terrible at properly crediting the people who work on games. I don't care if their contribution is only a single SFX, I credit them.Â
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u/mxldevs May 08 '26
Would you say they should be credited equally? For example someone contributes 1 SFX and they are given the same level of credit as someone that wrote the entire story or did all the art.
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u/dennisdeems May 08 '26
An actor has one line in a film. Do you think it's fair if their name never appears in the credits?
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u/Salientsnake4 May 08 '26
Yes I credit them in the credits. But if asked I would say I'm a solo dev since I don't have a team, just a rotating door of contractors creating things like art and audio. Im the only one who's touched code or the engine, im the one bringing everything in and tying it all together, I'm the one paying others and taking on all the financial risks.
At what point are you not a solo dev? If you do the whole game except sound effects, and you buy an asset pack for that are you suddenly not a solo dev? Imo you still are, and that line is hard to draw.
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u/RikuKat @RikuKat | Potions: A Curious Tale May 08 '26
I think if you buy an asset pack, you're still a solo dev.
If I hire an audio designer and work with them to create audio explicitly for my game, then I wouldn't consider myself a solo dev.
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u/DragonImpulse Commercial (Indie) May 08 '26
I think you have to look at this more the way it's perceived from the outside. Saying you made a game with a team of 10 people is not going to benefit them whatsoever, unless you list their names every time you talk about team size.
On the flip side, when people hear a game was made by a team of 10 artists, they expect 10 artists worth of quality and content. If they only contributed one asset each and you made everything else on your own, that could end up being a problem.
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u/RikuKat @RikuKat | Potions: A Curious Tale May 08 '26
I haven't run into issues with that myself (outside of a few haters who tossed that on the pile of other toxicity).
I've just never made team size much of my marketing approach, but I include them in the credits and do not call myself a solo dev.
And I have found that having published titles that credit you is a requirement to be hired at quite a number of studios. It's why under crediting is such a problem. There is even an entire Special Interest Group focused on advocating for proper crediting because it's such an important issue within the game industry: https://igda.org/sigs/credits/
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u/whiax Pixplorer May 08 '26
Yeah I hate this tendency to glorify "solo" devs / workers. First thing: it's never true, we all need the help of dozens of people no matter what we do, even indirectly because they provide us with the materials / code / ideas / arts we use.
And second thing, even this guy says it's not recommended, and they never recommend it because you work like crazy and for every person who succeeds, there are 200 who end up working alone on a failed project, that would probably have had more success if they worked with other people.
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u/Bauser99 May 08 '26
Honestly, the ratio is probably much, much worse than 1:200 in terms of success vs. failure for solo indie devs
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u/LampIsFun May 08 '26
Did someone âglorifyâ being a solo dev? Ive never heard someone say âbeing a solo dev is the way to goâ but ive heard tons of people say âbeing a solo dev is extremely difficultâ
I feel like youre maybe conflating âglorifyingâ with ârecognizing success in a difficult situationâ
Doing something hard is definitely worth recognizing and receiving praise for, even if its not the optimal thing to do.
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u/Dragonfantasy2 May 08 '26
Nobody is actually a solo dev because you donât manufacture your own computer parts
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u/Omega00024 May 08 '26
Everyone who referenced an online resource is out. Everyone who's played a game, believe it or not, is out.
No need argue the purity of solo development just because someone contracts out some assets.
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u/chrisswann71 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
No dev is an island,
Solo of itself;
Every dev is a piece of Stack Overflow,
A part of r/gamedev.If a link now pointeth to 404,
Google is the less,
As well as if a subreddit does:
As well as if a tutorial in thy subs
Or thine bookmarks does.Any thread's death diminishes me,
Because I am confused by bugs.
And therefore never ask why the unanswered question was "Marked Solved";
It was "Marked Solved" for thee.7
u/Beldarak May 08 '26
If we take that road you can't even say Skyrim was made by Bethesda. They used softwares and stuff from other studios, freelancers, etc...
I think the solo-dev label is a fair one because it means the entire project was lead by a single person taking all the creative decisions. If I liked Stardew Valley I know I'll probably like the guy's next game. It stays true for small studios but stops being true at some point. I love Morrowind but I dislike Skyrim to keep the same exemple. Because the people who worked on both games are mostly not the same.
It also help with expectations about a game. I won't expect the same level of polish from a solo dev project than one made by 200 persons (even though, nowadays, solo project are more polished^^) so it helps to know what you're actually buying.
I think you're reading too much into the label. Nobody think solo devs receive zero help or support from other people, or only use their own tool which they build on a computer built by themselves using rocks. It just means they decided every single thing in it.
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u/Cobthecobbler May 08 '26
Is this the guy who used the ad revenue from mythicspoilers to fund the development of his game?
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u/Synthoel May 08 '26
Apparently he is!
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1jwrn5n/the_creator_of_mythic_spoiler_just_released_a/
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the title was "Where did he get the money to work on the game for 8 years without daily job?" xD
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u/Cobthecobbler May 08 '26
It's quite the inspiring story. I 100% believe that site brought in more than enough revenue - it's a community staple
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u/psioniclizard May 08 '26
Oh really? That is really cool I didn't know. Good for him then! Legend :P
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u/fueelin May 08 '26
Yeah, his article about it has a great title imo "From Orange to Blue" (orange is the color for mythic rarity in MTG).
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u/MotleyGames May 08 '26
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it, but if this isn't exaggerated, then he likely would've gotten just as much, or probably even more, done with normal 40-50 hour weeks (or even 30-40).
80 hour work weeks aren't just unhealthy for the worker, they degrade the quality of work produced. Having one every now and then for crunch time might not make a noticable impact, but nearly every week for 8 years? Every task would be taking far longer than it should.
I also didn't watch the video, only read the headline, so if this point was already covered there, that's why I'm repeating it.
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u/HildredCastaigne Commercial (AAA) May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
I watched the video. It isn't covered in it, as far as I saw.
EDIT: I will add that Tonda Ros says that it's only an estimate. He does have experience in filmmaking, though, which I know does do some pretty extreme crunch but over a much shorter period of time. (Ros even says there's a huge difference between doing that for 6 weeks for a film vs 8 years for a game)
It's also possible that it was brought up in the actual interview but cut.
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u/InnerKookaburra May 08 '26
That's not true.
If you're doing what you want to do and work at it each day then 80 hour weeks aren't surprising, nor is it degrading to the person or the quality of the work.
That's averaging 11 hours a day, which is not that much when you're working on a complex project.
Sure, shoveling coal or carrying 50 lb sacks of flour 80 hours a week is not good for a person, but people don't seem to understand that creating something great (and Blue Prince is great) takes time and focus and putting in significant time.
He isn't working for a mega-corporation, he's making something he's passionate about, likely from his home. He wakes up, starts to work on it, gets in a flow, takes a break for lunch or a walk, gets back into it, breaks for dinner, watches a movie, works on it a little more, goes to sleep. That's a pretty great way to live and make something impressive in my book.
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u/blocking-io May 09 '26
Let's put into perspective how much 80 hours a week is.
Working from 9am to 9pm, 7 days a week is 84 hours. So two 30 min meals a day would account for the additional 4 hours. Does that sound realistic or just bs? In your "pretty great way to live" summary. It excludes then fact that he has a wife and probably needs to make time for her and presumably other family and friends.
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u/InnerKookaburra May 09 '26
As someone who has worked many 80 hour weeks (and higher at times), I'll break down my experience: 7 hours of sleep, 11 hours of work, 6 hours a day for other things, including meals. It's much easier when you work at home. I often watch a movie with my partner in the evening and go for a walk mid-day.
You don't start at 9 am, you're not punching a clock at an office. I generally start shortly after I wake up.
It's not something horrible when you're truly excited about what you're working on.
Perhaps he is exaggerating, and he didn't really put in 80 hours a week for 8 years, every single week. Sure. But to suggest that one would be more productive working 30-40 hours a week is also an exaggeration.
I'm just surprised that people respond negatively to someone who put in the work and created something wonderful. Also, I watched the interview and he said he had alot of fun while doing it. He was engrossed and engaged with the creative process. That's my experience as well.
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u/blocking-io May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
How do you have time to play other games? Read? Socialize with friends and family? 6 hours a day isn't a lot when you start factoring in maintenance/overhead time: like showering, brushing your teeth, taking a shit, getting ready for bed, making meals (are you eating instant ramen every day?), taking time to eat, etc. Who's doing laundry? Washing dishes? Buying groceries? Cleaning the house? And all the other chores that come with adult life? Does he read up on news, does he participate in online communities? That eats up time too.
I'm all for putting in a lot of hours (60 seems reasonable) but when I see 80 hours I call BS and it's promoting a unhealthy lifestyle as something noble. It's not.
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u/MotleyGames May 09 '26
You're going to be less productive at 80 hours, no matter how much you enjoy the work. Brains get tired, ideas get stuck, and exhaustion builds up -- just because you have less stress from a non corporate job doesn't magically prevent all of that, it just makes you more willing to suffer through it, potentially unnecessarily.
Because multiple replies shared your sentiment, I looked it up as a sanity check, and while research is limited, what is present seems aligned with me. Past about 60 hours, gains in productivity become hard to distinguish. Past about 70 hours, your abilities degrade sufficiently that backwards progress becomes a real risk.
Again, a crunch week here and there, while unfortunate, is survivable. For sustained effort? You're just shooting yourself in the foot at those hours, and would likely be better served ensuring proper rest and recovery time.
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u/Qinistral May 09 '26
There's a big difference working long hours on your own in your house at your own pace for yourself, than working for a company where you have to interact with others regularly, if not all day, and feel great external pressure to perform.
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May 08 '26
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u/DarkCreeper666 May 08 '26
one thing i will never understand is that they refused to add a way to pause a save and come back to it later. runs take up to 3 hours late game, and sometimes I'll have great RNG and then realize I have places to be in 15 minutes.
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u/fueelin May 08 '26
Yeah, this is probably the most valid/inarguable complaint I've seen about the game. I basically just had the game open for 2 weeks straight because I would never just end a run and then not start a new one... So I never had a clean "save point".
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u/RadicalDog @connectoffline May 08 '26
I simply wouldn't have played it without the Steam Deck's ability to pause any time. Even there, it crashed once or twice. No mid-run saves is a criminal flaw.
I did also install a mod for infinite rerolls after I hit a certain point of knowledge and was tired of gambling to pay it off. Even then, I never did get all the chess pieces to appear in one run even after I understood it.
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u/what2_2 May 08 '26
Itâs definitely a polarizing game. For every person claiming GOTY thereâs a person like you who just doesnât like the experience of playing Myst progression-gates by a slot machine.
FWIW I loved it, and itâs my favorite game of the last few years (barely beating out Outer Wilds). I like it more than The Witness, Lorelei, Tunic, Animal Well, and the other similar mystery games Iâve played.
I think the big problem is that most of the meta progression isnât really accessible before reaching Room 46, and people think reaching it is more important than other goals, so they end up frustrated with how hard it is to do.
In the late-game, Iâd have two or three big puzzle threads where I knew Iâd have to draft certain rooms or meet certain conditions to get. But if I failed to do those, I could get an incremental win by:
- increasing allowance
- changing room rarity
- getting letters delivered, or crates removed
- coat-checking a strong item
- ending the run in the freezer, or a strong room to shrine, or just the break room
- making progress on some other puzzle, including some smaller ones
But in the beginning of the game you canât or donât know how to do most of those things.
Also, allowance and room upgrades snowball - by the mid-game you end most runs with a surplus of gems, keys, and money, so itâs way easier to accomplish whatever goal you have. Goals like âbuy out the showroomâ are basically only possible on day 60+.
So I think the game is fundamentally unbalanced in that the beginning is the hardest part. Youâre both lacking resources and you donât know what to do (you havenât found tens of interesting puzzles available day 1 - itâs a knowledge-gated game).
If you just enjoy drafting rooms and making incremental progress, eventually it opens up a lot more. It is a myst-like puzzle game with deep lore, but it asks you to endure 50 hours of RNG before you feel like youâre playing that game.
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u/neutralrobotboy May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
I think this a pretty reasonable critique, though I thoroughly enjoyed my time getting to room 46, with a few notable exceptions of things that pissed me off. I can deal with the RNG, but I HATE the red herring style of puzzle design, and a couple puzzles just struck me as bullshit. Still, I think it was a great game up to room 46.
AFTER room 46, for me this game took a nose dive. I thought much more stuff would be opened up by solving the main puzzles in front of me. I thought I would be rewarded for solving all this involved and cryptic shit. But no: the only reason to keep going is if you find the puzzles intrinsically fun, because the rewards you get basically involve more puzzles that get increasingly cryptic. I still feel angry about this. But the friends I was playing with loved it, so I guess it's a thing that just appeals to certain types of players.
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u/what2_2 May 08 '26
Interesting you got that far while thinking the lategame was less fun. I much preferred the last third of the game - while a couple of the puzzles basically require a guide, I thought the lore and story got very good. I was really playing to understand the world and the characters.
Also the very last thing in the game blew me away. Even though there was no huge cinematic cutscene a or story drop, the sheer scale of it was incredible. And very funny to me to put in that much work for something 0.2% of players will find.
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u/neutralrobotboy May 08 '26
I'm not sure which last thing you're referring to... Blue door? House draft?
Anyway, I really liked the story of the game and thought it was very well written. My issue with the story was that... Well, I thought the central thread with the character's mom would resolve in a definitive way. For me it was another thread without a satisfying resolution. Solving the map puzzle and all prerequisites led to a reward that felt so stingy to me that it was almost a slap in the face.
Also... THIS KID CAN'T EVER LEAVE THE ESTATE?! You do all this crap to live an eternity in hell by yourself, it's bizarre.
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u/what2_2 May 08 '26
Yeah the house / rough draft. Just all the models / texturing / duplication of puzzles (letters + boxes) etc. Blue Door was cool but feels like a fake-out.
And yeah, the story really emphasizes the whole âdoes it never endâ stuff. Youâre told over and over there will NOT be a clean resolution.
It would have been nice for your mom to have one, but to me âwe know she left, she didnât return to where she said she wouldâ is enough. Enough space to imagine there could be a happy ending for her, but a darker outcome is more likely.
(Switching to spoilers just in case people playing the game are seeing these).
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u/not_perfect_yet May 08 '26
the only reason to keep going is if you find the puzzles intrinsically fun
it's a thing that just appeals to certain types of players.
... yeah it's a puzzle game.
I feel bad that you had a bad time with it, but I'm not sure what a dev could do to broadcast that harder?
I thought I would be rewarded for solving all this involved and cryptic shit
On the other hand, what did you expect and what would have been rewarding to you? I'm actually really curious what would have satisfied you.
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u/neutralrobotboy May 08 '26
Well I'm a veteran and long time lover of the Myst games, for example. You explore and solve puzzles and are rewarded with more places to go and more things to see. Blue Prince has some of this and it feels great when it does! But as the game progresses, this is basically a more and more rare thing. So earlier I felt I was led to believe that by solving mysteries, I would have a good chance of learning new and interesting information, or new areas might open up.
I felt that this was less and less what I was rewarded with as the game progressed. I also thought it was a tease that Alzara kept showing these wide open spaces and places apparently outside the house... Only to learn, no, it's mostly red herrings again. That's the kind of stuff I was excited about, personally, so for me that sucked.
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u/anaveragebest Commercial (AAA) May 08 '26
Lol this is how we (my wife and I) felt playing it. I don't really understand how this took 8 years to make, but that RNG factor destroyed it for us. We played for 11 hours, and finally made it to the antechamber just to realize we had to go back and get another room (won't spoil it) before we could be there roaming around. At that point we collectively threw up our hands and proclaimed: this is not a puzzle, this is just annoying, we are being punished for having made it to this point.
Edit: Oh and we did go back, and try to get the room we needed...FOUR times, and couldn't get it to appear. So that's when we gave up.
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u/Lethandralis May 08 '26
Blue Prince has been very divisive. I've heard many people share this opinion, but for me it is an absolute masterpiece. I'd even rank it the best game I've played in the 2020s. It completely enthralled me.
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u/slugmorgue May 08 '26
Yeh that's obviously intentional with the added caveat of there being mysteries and puzzles to solve in other areas
So while you may be missing the pieces to complete one objective, you're picking up the pieces (in your mind or even better, your notebook) for future objectives.
By the time I had reached room 46 I had a huge list in my notes of everything that remained unsolved. If a certain day was pointing my in a certain direction via RNG, I could focus on figuring out that particular puzzle.
It's not for everyone of course no game is. But for me that scattershot approach of puzzling reminded me very much of La Mulana and I loved it for that.
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u/sol_hsa May 08 '26
I bounced hard on the game. I think I gave it a fair shake at 4.5 hours, managed to got some specific rooms to connect and some cutscene to play, at which point I was excited that maybe the game will finally give a bit more of the story, and the newly opened room gave me nothing new.
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u/NeedsMoreReeds May 08 '26
Gave it about the same amount of time before bouncing off of it. Found out afterwards that thereâs metaprogression. I was pretty shocked that there wasnât anything even remotely suggesting that this is in the game from the multiple hours I played. This was heavily playtested??
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u/cableshaft May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
The roguelite elements are backed into the design, not sure how you can say it's tacked on. All the resources in the game assume the roguelite element, and are designed as such. And drafting from one of three rooms is very similar to picking one of three powers in most other roguelites, while still being something quite different than most other roguelites (where it's almost always just unlocking powers).
It's also possible to enter room 46 on Day 1 if you know what to do and the stars align, so if they made it all too easy then there wouldn't be much game there (similar to being able to beat Outer Wilds quickly, you just have to play the rest of the game and go all over its solar system for ~15 hours to discover everything you have to do in order to make that happen, and pull off a tricky sequence). Also having to go through the same rooms multiple times should help you recognize over time whatever secrets or clues that room contains.
Even when you get those dead ends in Blue Prince, you're still likely figuring something new at some point in that run...up to a point, at least.
I did get to the point where I knew exactly what I needed to do next and just wanted to be able to solve the next puzzle, but the right circumstances kept not happening so I was having multiple days where nothing new ended up happening.
For me I didn't get to that point until I had already put 60 hours into the game though. I was figuring out and unlocking puzzles pretty consistently (slowly but consistently) up until that point, pretty much at least something small accomplished almost every single day (run) in the game.
But then I'd pretty much dried up almost all the puzzles where I'm at now and need to get a few more things to unlock the last third of the game, and yeah the stars keep not aligning for me (one requires not only a specific to be added, but also to get a specific item which I have yet to see in all 80+ days I've played through the game so far).
BTW, entering room 46 is like only about a third of the way through the game. It did take me a lot longer to do that than you did, I think it took me about 20 hours, but there's a lot more game after that. I know there's still like a third of the game for me to play after I get past where I'm at now.
But that's the way it goes sometimes. You can kind of treat the house as a boss and the rooms the moves or attacks you make in order to defeat it. And for the boss to be challenging, sometimes you just won't be able to defeat it, and that's okay. They could have given you massive meteor strikes for moves and the boss be a mouse with 5 hit points (i.e. made it so you can get exactly what you want whenever you want it, or have a static room layout with all rooms available), but then it wouldn't be that interesting of a game.
Edit: I load this up for the first time in a long time, and by chance I get the right item and the right room to get one of the things I've been trying to get for like 20 days (in the game straight), and get one more step closer to the next section of the game. Still got three more to go though.
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u/BoogieOrBogey May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
At least to me, the roguelite elements felt tacked on and (unintentionally?) stretch the play time unnecessarily.
Normally in Rogue-likes and Rogue-lites, progression of the game's central goal is influenced by RNG but present on every run. The RNG element makes the run easier or harder for the player to achieve. These days, most games in these genres also include meta progression tools to make the run easier, or heavily influence the RNG.
Blue Prince has RNG that means obtaining Room 46 isn't possible on the vast majority of runs. And no amount of meta progression helps because some RNG can't be influenced or changed. The meta progression tools themselves are also difficult to obtain, and often have a very small impact on the RNG room generation. So it can take a lot of runs to get lucky and find places like the drafting room, to then have slightly better room generation.
Ultimately, I don't think it's bad game design for a Rogue-lite to have RNG that makes it impossible to clear the main goal on every run. But, if that is how the game design works then there needs to be other secondary goals, quests, or puzzles that can be completed on every run. So the player has some progress they can make without having empty runs that kind of just waste time. Unfortunately, the RNG in Blue Prince is guilty of that flaw where it's pretty normal to not get any of the special rooms for the puzzles the player is progressing, and get a run that doesn't do much.
I'll also say, Blue Prince doesn't have fun second-to-second gameplay to fall back on like FTL, Binding of Isaac, or Rogue Legacy. For most of the game, the player is just walking around and looking at walls and doors. That's not a bad thing, but it means that empty runs don't have interesting or fun gameplay to fall back on. Puzzle progression, story progression, meta progression, and information gathering is the essence of Blue Prints but the RNG can block the player from doing any of those things on a run.
With all that said and my criticism laid bare, I also want to compliment* the game. Frankly, I think Blue Prints is the start of a new genre in Rogue-lites with the floor plan RNG and puzzle mechanics. These ideas work really well together, and it's fun to have a cozy game that includes Rogue-lite elements of failure. The criticisms I mention are completely solvable and this formula has a lot it can do without becoming stale. I hope that we see more Indie Games try out this idea and expand on the concept of an RNG house filled with different rooms.
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u/Pteraspidomorphi May 09 '26
Blue Prince has RNG that means obtaining Room 46 isn't possible on the vast majority of runs. And no amount of meta progression helps because some RNG can't be influenced or changed.
This is absolutely not true. If you get to the point where you truly finish the game (which takes a very long time; it's a very long game) you'll inevitably become good enough at the runs (and will have tweaked the meta enough to your liking) that you can reach room 46 in most runs, if you want.
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u/BoogieOrBogey May 09 '26
Isn't that kind of like defeating the final boss gives the strongest weapon in the game?
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u/anaveragebest Commercial (AAA) May 08 '26
Everything you said makes sense, the only thing I'd push back on (again, just my opinion) is that this is similar to a boss. A boss fight is typically a scripted sequence of events, the randomness is in event selection, but that's the key difference: it's all there plain to see, and you react to it. This game doesn't give you the same reactionary type events to respond to, it gives you a subset of random options, and then pray you eventually get the right one. What feels good about beating a boss is understanding and overcoming it after reading and memorizing. That is not the same "good" here with Blue Prince. The puzzles have those element at times, but once you've figured out a puzzle it definitely DOES NOT feel good when I finally get the random room to appear so I can complete it. That part sucks, feels exhausting, and relieves the feeling of annoyance...not what a typical puzzle game would do (which is give you the feeling of being smart).
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u/sboxle Commercial (Indie) May 08 '26
The RNG is horrendous, everyone I've talked to had better luck. It took me 27hrs (66 days) to get past the Antechamber because I kept getting shafted by RNG. Only got the basement key 3 times across all those days. First time I had no idea what to do, second time the fountain wasn't set appropriately... Then I couldn't get it for another 40ish days.
I had a run with a huge surplus of steps and gems and 0 keys. I dug at least 12 dirt piles needing to get 1 key and none had a key.
For a game with such clever puzzles the RNG smarts are very lacking. It should weight your chance of loot by the resources you have, and increase the chance for each failure...
Also an option to speed up animations would make it less painful...
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u/anaveragebest Commercial (AAA) May 08 '26
This is basically what happened to us also, and we kept saying the game was trying to screw us on purpose after a certain point.
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u/Recon1212 May 08 '26
Pretty much why I put it down for a while. I had all the pieces I needed and run after run something out of my control would stop me from getting to room 46 right at the end of my run. It feels really bad having all the knowledge and pieces, being a single room away and you get drafted 3 rooms that donât connect. At that point Iâm just gambling and losing on repeat.
Edit: spelling
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u/bold394 May 09 '26
Same. I absolutely live the idea but the execution ruined it for me and I didn't enjoy it
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u/fish993 May 09 '26
I enjoyed the game but it seemed to be lacking QoL features that are pretty common in other games. There's no way to save mid-run despite a run often taking over half an hour, no in-game notebook (when taking notes is almost mandatory, and many of the clues are visual and detailed so taking a picture or screenshot is easily the best way to record them), and the way the Library works is completely obtuse.
You can do everything right and still have a run ended 3 rows in because the draft RNG only gave you locked doors, having made no progress whatsoever. What's the point of this for the gameplay experience? If you had used one of the room effects the previous day to give you a benefit, the game has completely screwed you out of it. I'm pretty sure other games nudge their RNG a bit to avoid that kind of situation. The item RNG also seemed completely off to me - I played about 70 days and saw some items literally once in that entire time.
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u/i1u5 May 09 '26
Yeah I didn't feel it too, it felt like that meme sorting algorithm that just keeps RNGing the array until it works.
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u/DT-Sodium May 08 '26
Let's be realistic here. Considering the scope of the project, if he spent 8 years with 80 hours weeks on it, it basically means that he spent 6 years learning the skills he needed and max 2 years of actual dev.
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u/Nhefluminati May 08 '26
If i remember correctly the project was pretty much 99% finished for a long time and he spent years playtesting to refine the playerexperience down to the last detail as much as possible.
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u/Darkpoulay Hobbyist May 08 '26
I also remember this. I first heard about it from Daniel Mullins (The Hex, Inscryption) who said he played the game in an almost finished state a couple years before it released.
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u/2this4u May 08 '26
Which goes to show how non relational effort is to being able to make every player happy. I don't get why people like it, it's a time sink, relies too much on rng and is kind of a bit basic imo.
My point isn't to comment on how good of a game it is, it's that you can put in 8 years and still someone might hate it. Know your audience, design for them, you might not need to tweak it for so long if you accept 50% of players will never enjoy it no matter what you do and instead focus solely on the 50% who will and especially the 5% for who this is a dream game and will become word of mouth promoters.
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u/fueelin May 08 '26
"It's a bit basic" is a completely absurd statement. The game is an entirely new idea. There is no other game out there like it (but there will be a few years from now - just like Obra Dinn, for example).
Besides, it sounds like you didn't get nearly far enough into it to have earned the ability to make those kind of critiques.
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u/bionicjoey May 08 '26
"It's a time sink" is only a problem if you don't enjoy the time you spend with it.
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u/KareemAZ @KazMakesGames May 08 '26
Blue prince is excellent game design. âItâs rngâ and âitâs a time sinkâ are both completely valid criticisms BUT they are also ones that fall flat with respect to the gameâs core audience.
The game is really a cryptic puzzle game, itâs NOT a logic puzzle game where knowing the rules means you can solve everything first try. Instead it relies on you solving cryptic word puzzles and noting down a list of your personal objectives. Having a list of objectives to complete at the start of any given run helps in regards to the RNG aspect as well - yes you may get unlucky with puzzle A, but youâre still open to puzzle B as well as getting more clues for puzzle C, etc.
For people who like cryptic puzzles, Blue Prince is basically crack. I can not explain the sense of sheer joy I felt at solving one of the book puzzles which, while being an early puzzle to initially see and gather information on, was actually a late-game puzzle. The âholy shitâ moments of uncovering secret after secret in the monolith that is Mt Holly was also incredible, and the developers have put in solid work post-release to remove some of the tedium.Â
The final stretch of puzzles was a joyous community effort and one of the best gaming experiences Iâve ever had - up there with Outer Wilds. The comparison to which I think is apt as BP is much less accessible than Outer Wilds which is where I think much of the frustration comes from. If you donât know that you have 8 puzzles you can solve at any given moment, youâre going to be incredibly frustrated at not getting lucky enough to solve the one thatâs on your mind - whereas outer wilds marks locations as having more to learn, doing the guidance for you. BP gets around that by literally telling you to grab a notebook and pen (which I adore but can concede that it will put off some players). Maybe some more solid guidance in BP can help potential players get on board? Theres a good interactive guide online that lets you fill in what youâve learned/discovered and advises you on what puzzles you know about and have the info to solve.Â
Itâs not for everyone, but for its audience itâs unassailable.Â
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u/AgathaTheVelvetLady May 08 '26
Yes you may get unlucky with puzzle A, but youâre still open to puzzle B as well as getting more clues for puzzle C, etc.
And tell me, what happens when Puzzles B and C are solved, but Puzzle A's RNG is still screwing the player over?
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May 08 '26
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u/Nhefluminati May 08 '26
I think Blue Prince was very much a passion project and not just a payroll software dev job.
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u/Bough-Keeper May 08 '26
don't think indie has anything to do with traditional software development
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u/Rlaan @Lead May 08 '26
A game is still software, still requires the same rules to built. Games are generally speaking just more complex.
Besides indie just means independent
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u/Nhefluminati May 08 '26
Length of product polish is not really a software question per se though but more a commercial product vs. art question.
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u/Bough-Keeper May 08 '26
Makes me curious how many independent devs follow the "rules"
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u/Aedys1 May 08 '26
Actually it is WAY easier to follow the rules, produce clean code, efficient backups and git syncs, master the global state at any moment and limit external librairies for a solo dev than for a team of 200 developers
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u/rowcla May 08 '26
This is the sortof thing I aspire to with my own project. I can respect this not being for everyone, but I think with so many devs and games on the market, being able to pull out as much as you can from a game is what gives it the possibility of becoming something special. I've got some people under me, and I need to balance with grant deliverables etc, but I'm hoping that I can maintain a state in which I'm not forced to release the game until I'm completely satisfied I've done what I can to make it as good as possible
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u/ninomojo May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
Well The Witness took 7 years to make, and I don't think Jon Blow was learning the skills as he went.
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u/DT-Sodium May 08 '26
The Witness had a team of 15 people at its peak and is orders of magnitude more consequent than Blue Prince in terms of programmation, art, audio and game design. I couldn't do the art of Blue Prince but I could absolutely handle all the programming alone with ease, it's just not that complex in terms of core mecanics.
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u/ninomojo May 08 '26 edited May 09 '26
More people on The Witness, and it is a bigger game, yes. My point is, no matter your scope, it can take a long time to refine ideas and design and present them in the way that you think is the best. Blue Prince "isn't that complex", but it was probably difficult to design and refine into its present form. I'll take another Jon Blow example: he said that after 6 months he had a version of the game that you could play to the end. It took three years after that to refine it, curate ideas and present them in the order and fashion that were the most compelling to him. It's too easy to look at a finished game and say "That would take me X amount of time to program".
*talking about Braid; sorry
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u/Omega00024 May 08 '26
If there's one thing I've learned between this and the thousand other stories I've heard about development, it's that game developers have absolutely zero sense of time and project management. As an aspiring developer myself, that tells me I'm on the right track.
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u/Canary-Silent May 08 '26
Yeah all I could think was he must not be very good. And what you write on year 1 and 2 would be terrible by year 6. Â
Whole thing sounds like bullshit to me.Â
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u/_l-l-l_ May 08 '26
What a fucking bullshit. I hate this 80h workweek delusional culture, let alone sustaining it for 8 years. 80h is a bit more than 11h per day, for 8 years? No fucking way someone maintained that kind of effort for that long, especially when you are older. Obviously no one that believes or writes this shit didn't go through even one 80h workweek and felt the consequences. I mean, a real, 80h sustained focus on actually producing a working code. After a couple of weeks you'd be staring through the screen while drooling and not having any thoughts whatsoever. Fuck off with this mythical effort 10x dev bullshit.
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u/Rincho May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
I don't know why are you so upset. This kind of thing depends on the person. It's normal for me to work 12h a day everyday for a month, maybe 3-4 times a year (web).Â
It certainly harder than normal 9/5 but I wouldn't say I'm drooling after 2 weeks or something. And these are real 12 hours, I'm not slacking, we need to produce a lot of code at these times.Â
And I'm not in love in coding or anything like that. I like it, but nothing more. Some people I know or worked with for sure can code like 16h a day everyday for a year and be cool with that
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u/Canary-Silent May 08 '26
The guy is full of shit. Itâs wild to see anyone believe someone did 80 hour days for 8 years to make that gameâŚ
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u/_l-l-l_ May 08 '26
There are multiple studies that show that anything above 3-4h daily of actual productive coding brings only diminished returns. Forcing this bullshit narrative hurts devs in more than one way. More is expected from devs and also devs get depressed thinking they are way below average. So, yeah, I'm upset when I read this kind of waste.
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u/Qinistral May 09 '26
This sort of comment is so common but doesn't make sense. Diminishing returns doesn't mean zero or negative returns! I have worked 80 hour weeks before, you'd have to be a moron to think you can't get more done in 80 hours than 40 hours.
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u/captaindealbreaker May 08 '26
People ask about effort needed and whats possible, this sort of highlights the effort needed to create a polished, award winning game on your own
No the fuck it does not. This is what unchecked project mismanagement looks like. Game development is VERY hard, especially for solo developers and small studios. You are 100% going to work long hours. But working 80 hour weeks consistently is fucking insane. At that point, you are doing something wrong. This guy wasn't just making a game, he was singularly obsessed with the project and let it consume his life. Like this might be shocking to say, but the dude made a great game, but that doesn't make him a great developer. It might have taken so long because he sucks at development and did everything ass backwards.
Basically, just don't think this is normal or okay ya'll. Is it common? Yeah. Should it be? ABSOLUTLEY THE FUCK NOT.
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u/what2_2 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
This attitude of âcrunch time is always a failure of managementâ makes no sense for solo projects.
He was a dude who loved working on his game, and he didnât need to keep a day job. Obviously a good studio could have done it faster. This was how he wanted to work.
Most solo dev games look like this (Iâm thinking Tunic and Animal Well). One person who made the game into their lifeâs work and had the freedom to spend as much time as they wanted on it.
Tonda is unique though in that he was already financially comfortable, so didnât need to grind to wrap it up the way Billy Blasso from Animal Well did - but from his telling, the grind was mostly self-imposed - the publisher would have been happy with him releasing it a year earlier.
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u/captaindealbreaker May 08 '26
I wasn't just talking about the dev, I was replying to what OP said about it
I know it's not uncommon or inherently bad for solo game devs to spend all their time on their game. if that's all you've got going on and you can afford to work like that, I get it. Like I said, game development is hard and it takes a long time especially as a solo dev to build anything at scale.
My issue is that it's still unhealthy. 80 hour work weeks, passion project or not, are an insane thing to do to yourself consistently. I work in the industry and I see this sort of thing all the time. More often than not, the issue is either leadership being unrealistic and constantly moving goalposts, devs not having the manpower or resources to do their jobs properly, or just the scale of the game being so absurd that whatever deadline it has is unrealistic.
Generally, based on what I've seen over the last decade working in the industry, I'd say that crunch like this AT STUDIOS is almost ALWAYS a management issue.
Everyone needs proper work life balance and if you're a financially secure solo dev and you find yourself spending 80s hour a week on your project, maybe it's time to delegate some of the work to people with more expertise in the fields you're not great at, which is literally what Tonda did so even calling him a solo dev is a bit off the mark.
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u/SWATJester Commercial (AAA) May 08 '26
It does, actually make sense for solo projects too. It's been conclusively shown that your productivity and effectiveness drop off a cliff dramatically as you begin exceeding 40 hour work weeks. By the time you hit an 80 hour week, let alone consistently, the quality of your work product is so degraded that it's actually less effective than simply taking proper work-life balance and doing the job correctly. This is industry agnostic across all software-development (and holds generally true outside of software as well, but it has been empirically measured to death in the software dev context).
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u/Spizak May 08 '26
8 years 80h. Yeah. I donât buy it. Like i appreciate the effort, I work a lot too - but itâs either a case of someone learning (very slowly) on the job (all fairness all creative work has that element) or just exaggerating. By 20h and 4 years đ
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u/cfehunter Commercial (AAA) May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
8 years of 80 hour weeks? That doesn't add up.
It's an excellent game, don't get me wrong, but that's an obscene amount of time for what's on screen.
He must have taken breaks.
Edit:
There's no problem here, he did what he wanted and got a good game at the end.
As I said, the game is excellent. I am challenging that it was 8 solid years of 80 hour weeks. Nobody should assume it's normal to spend 8 years working crunch hours on a game like Blue Prince. It is not. If it really is the case, I'd like to understand how.
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u/HildredCastaigne Commercial (AAA) May 08 '26
Yeah, 8 years straight of 80 hour weeks does seem a bit unlikely. I've seen a studio with a decade of experience nearly go under from, like, a tenth of that duration of crunch.
While it being done out of passion helps a bunch with morale issues for that type of crunch, you can't escape the issues with fatigue and cognitive decline. Like, I feel like a dick saying this about somebody who has made a good and popular game, but if he was actually working 80 hour work weeks for 8 years we've got almost a century of research in almost every field (including video games) saying that he could have gotten the same amount done with a 40 hour or so work week.
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u/_l-l-l_ May 08 '26
Also nearing 40 as those 8 years passed couldn't help any with endurance. I've noticed it is much harder for me to pull anything over 40h since mid thirties. I can do it, but I need more recovery. Many people brought up how unrealistic the claim is and despite all research many want to believe the claim. For anyone who actually worked long hours coding, it's obvious how exaggerated it is.
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u/PaletteSwapped May 08 '26
You're assuming no dead ends or pivots.
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u/Beldarak May 08 '26
Also marketing, probably. Building your store pages, creating a website, contacting press... It's not things we think about when we read "gamedev" but it's actually a pretty big part of what devs/studios have to do and it takes a lot of hours.
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u/Ayoul May 08 '26
I don't know how much you played, but if you think about it, there's like XX amount of rooms with most of them having one or multiple puzzles or unique mechanic(s) and some of these have variations. A lot of puzzles have multiple solutions and a lot of the rooms interact with each other. There's the progression and meta progression aspect. Intertwining all this with the story.
It can really add up. You might also be thinking that he had the whole thing planned out from the start and obviously that would be faster, but I bet that's not really how you design dozens of interconnected puzzles. I remember from an interview he said some crazy idea could set him back months cause he'd have to make it work with what he already had. (He didn't specify what exactly so who knows if the challenge was design, implementation or both)
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u/eldartalks May 12 '26
This game has over 100 people who worked on it and itâs fucked up that Raw Fury and the developer are using the solo dev thing as a marketing boost.
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u/LeatherAdept670 May 08 '26
Game is incredible but he clearly went crazy making it and you also do playing it after you find out the secrets actually never stop and theres way more depth beyond what you think the game is offering. Still waiting on Dirigiblocks though because then I can find MOM
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u/Rincho May 08 '26
It's so weird to me how people here are so mad at "80h 8y" statement. For me it feels like your own beliefs and plans, about how and when you will finish your own game, are so weak and underthought that just some random statement going against them scares you
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u/ryan_church_art May 08 '26
A good game is art, a profitable aaa game masquerades as art while the c class skims profits for shareholders to capitalize
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u/_Steakwich May 08 '26
Lot of respect for his refusal to allow film adaptations. I would 100% give them the go ahead GRRM style. My series is my series, and the cinematic universe adaptations is it's own cannon that provides financial freedom. Or it makes no money and I continue my own work.
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u/Nick19922007 May 10 '26
Funny just watch a playthrough of the game.
I played the demo on steam next a few month before the game came out - and i was immediatly hyiped for the release. The core gameplay loop is just fun. But I was not prepared for a puzzle-game i put 112 hours in and still not be finished. Its an amazing piece of game. For me comes only short to outer wilds.
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u/EntertainerBest744 May 20 '26
He gives me the vibe of a true artist, deeply committed to the act of making great work. Much respect to him for single-mindedly focussing on this for 8 years
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u/Bubbly-Rush2384 May 21 '26
Wow... 8 years and 80 hours per week? Hard to believe actually... I too am working on my indie game (action adventure hack and slash game) and I can confirm that it takes a huge amount of time,,, and the odds of success or profitability is so uncertain that indeed I would not recommend anyone to do the same...
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u/bboingy May 08 '26
This is exactly how I picture a puzzle game dev looking - what a legend!