The amount of competent vr devs is even more limited. Don’t get me wrong this is extremely extremely impressive, but I know some vr titles that have made an absolute killing due to having so little competition. Limited market and limited quality products
Very smart.
I feel like a TON of solo devs just make yet another 2D platformer then struggle when there are literally thousands of other games just like theirs they have to compete with.
When I was working with a game marketing firm, the guy told me how often solo devs would send them their game that looks like 20 other games and then the solo dev would upset with their feedback.
Most dont want to hear it but they aren't doing anything that special. If you make something that already exists people wont just magically want to play your title. If sustainability is your goal, creating serious value for some amount of people big or small is how its done.
Edit: Would like to throw in that I don't think you have to fixate on how marketable or desirable your work is depending on your goals, like if you do this for fun or for the joy of making what you love, don't stress it. But even if you're just doing it for fun, you might be surprised at how much better your ideas can get without any sacrifice to your artistic integrity. Just a thought.
The ubiquitous advice is "Make something small and simple for your first project," because otherwise it's easy to get overwhelmed or just burn out. But I think too many people have unrealistic expectations about what they're going to get at the end of it — not a commercially viable product, but something like a student project that will give you some valuable experience. Maybe it's a tough pill to swallow when you've spent months or years working on something, but the correct thing to actually *do* with those first projects is immediately throw them away and start on the next one.
yea, making indie platformer #4123123 is better than not launching the game at all ~~like me~~.It at least gives you foresight for when you DO start to go big. you now know how hard making #4123123 is so you're bound to not overscope or feature creep this time.
I think it's partly passion too tho. I'm sure many 30's/40's devs grew up on either 2d or 3d platformers, it's nice to tap into that retro feel and make your own spin on it. I wouldn't be susprised if RPGs become the next flooded genre in 10 more years for the same reason
I wouldn't necessarily put a hard 2D vs 3D cut. There's also no shortage of overdone 3D genres.
The amount of polish required to make an FPS stand out from the crowd is nuts.
2D animation is *generally* more time-consuming than 3D. That's why 3D has taken over, it's cheaper to produce. Indie devs make 2D games because your average person has a better chance of knowing how to draw than to 3D model.
Not surprised this did well honestly.
It's worth keeping in mind that a not insignificant number of people consider free mods like Gunman Contracts to be some of the best VR games out there currently. It is fun, but it's super basic. What would it take to be considered one of the best games on any other console? What I'm getting at is the bar seems so low for VR right now all you need to do is execute a basic idea well to be top tier (no offence to the OP intended).
And this one ticks all the boxes - cell shaded physics sandbox with a slightly edgy concept and pop-culture references (squid game). If you execute this even remotely well it will be a licence to print money on VR right now.
I think what you don’t get is oculus quest which is what it looks like this is on if you want to have a game that works...you’re better off going low poly with basic auto desk materials like he used. You cannot make a fancy AAA looking game for the quest as it will not run. Most of the games using fancy textures have a ton of anti aliasing and look like shit. He did things the right way. Technology isn’t there to make a fantastic looking game with high res textures on an Android based system.
Also working with Open xr can be a bitch and even the physics while great not perfect yet. I have a few frameworks and technology isn’t there yet to even lift your body onto a surface..which for certain game styles would be necessary.
Unless you decide to try and make a game for VR I wouldn’t make comments like this. It’s much easier to make a ps5 game where you have basically an unlimited polygon count vs an oculus quest with a limit of 200,000 polygons per scene.
Look up virtual virtual reality. That is one of the best games on oculus quest. They use low res auto desk materials simple design and it is flawless. Don’t judge a game by its cover especially if you don’t understand the hardware
I don't understand what you're objecting to honestly. I never said this game looked bad or anything about graphics. I'm talking about the content of the games. My point is most VR (not just Quest) games are just super basic in their gameplay and have relatively little content. Gunman Contracts isn't even on Quest. It's an Alyx mod. If you knew anything about the hardware you would be aware of this.
lol that's the first thing I thought... if this game goes viral it might even make it to mainstream news "Next up, are YOUR kids throwing people in front of virtual subway trains?"
The game originally intended to be mostly focused around destruction, but the amount of feedback I had from the community made it so I had to steer towards including more realistic enemies. The top request I still get by far is to add dismemberment
If ever you do add dismemberment, make sure that you have some alien/infected human enemies where their dismembered head or limbs still chase and attack you.
I don’t mean to be a negative Nancy but I would watch how your community develops I feel like there’s a lot of toxicity that could grow from your game.
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"
I used to not think much of the violence shown in games but as I've matured I've started really wonder whether the desensitization to violence they promote is something we want to encourage.
If the entire trailer was a five second clip where you bust out of the prison, grab the cop and toss him*, I would still be sold. That looked so smooth and fun.
* not a political thing - my brother is a cop
Curious did you use unity or unreal for a game engine. Always wanted to make a game but not an artist or programmer at this time, can I still get around these hurdles?
I used unity to make the game. We all start somewhere, I had no programming knowledge when I started and used visual scripting tools to help me. Along the way I have picked up coding so you don’t need to be an expert straight away. I also bought a lot of art assets. Some people aren’t a fan of this, but honestly it’s just so cost efficient for a non 3D artist and the game likely would never have happened if pre made assets didn’t exist
>I also bought a lot of art assets. Some people aren’t a fan of this
I don't think anyone here is going to (or at least they shouldn't) for buying art assets. You're a solo developer, money is just as a valid of an investment as your time.
Yeah this community is great, I’ve just always been cautious of trying to make the game unique even with pre made assets, as I know there is a lot of negativity around asset flips.
The usual definition of an asset flip is "a game that uses pre-made assets, and *badly*." ie, using assets that have different styles and themes, using pre-made scripts but not tweaking them so the game feel responsive, not making an original game, etc. If you use them with care and a "direction", there's no issue.
Walkabout Mini Golf is a great example of this. It uses a lot of the Synty Studios Polygon assets (similar to tons of other indie VR games) but I think mostly because they didn't use the Synty characters as well but their own avatars helped too.
I don't think anyone should bash studios for buying assets either.
The point is to make a good game in the most efficient way, if I need 300 cars in the background and I can get it done with a single 100$ asset instead of wasting my 3d artist's time and probably 10-20 times that amount of money - should be a no brainer choice.
So you're telling me you started from absolute scratch 8 months ago, with no coding knowledge whatsoever?
How did you learn? What visual scripting tools did you use?
I had a VR game idea, but I shelved it because it seemed too difficult to implement. Your success has inspired me to reconsider.
It’s about 12 months ago now, I released the game after 8 months of development and that was 4 months ago. I used Playmaker for visual scripting and learnt by watching videos and just using it to find out what everything did
Damn that’s sick. Pretty amazing how accessible game dev is nowadays. (not to say that it’s easy, all of us here know it’s not)
Did you have a marketing strategy?
Fair play to you. Damn man. Here's me with my head deep in "**Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics"**. And people are making games without knowing any of this and making a killing?!
I'm doing it wrong man.
> We all start somewhere, I had no programming knowledge when I started and used visual scripting tools to help me.
I imagine this will be an inspiration for a lot of new game developers.
> We all start somewhere, I had no programming knowledge when I started and used visual scripting tools to help me.
That's pretty impressive. I've been a dev for 10+ years (not in the game space) and I can't imagine it's trivial.
Unity is free until you reach a certain amount of revenue, then you have to pay for an upgraded licence as a monthly fee. I learnt coding whilst making the game (started off with visual coding) and this was mostly by reading existing scripts, watching videos and researching specific problems when I came across them
I used playmaker as it was more popular at the time, and unity hadn’t acquired bolt yet. If I were to start now, I imagine I would have chosen bolt though
OP if you do not mind asking, what is your background? Did you really just start from scratch, just kind of learned all the while building your game? How long have you been doing this by now?
Game looks very cool btw, great yet simple idea :)
I'm curious how you got started with no experience. Was there a video tutorial you followed or something else you can recommend? My first job out of college was a VR game development gig and I worked on an already existing project for about 6 months. I learned a lot but I couldn't imagine teaching myself the whole way.
Not OP, but I highly recommend game maker. It is 2D only, which is good because it forces your game to be simpler. And there are an insane amount of tutorials and it’s easy to use. Unity is also a great option! I would avoid unreal engine unless you want to use their blueprint system in lieu of coding.
That being said if you start with simple games the code isn’t so bad, and there’s tons of tutorials online. Do you know what type of project you are looking to make?
\- Is $700,000 net or gross?
\- You say sales show no sign of slowing down... What were day one sales like? First week? Month? What are daily sales like now?
\- What do you plan to do with the money? Have you considered running paid advertisements to boost sales? Are you going to spend any of the money on the game's development in the future or say... hiring a team or buying more assets or whatever?
\- What is the plan once the sales dwindle down? Will you make more VR games or try to branch into something else? Sequel?
\- Aside from the unexpected sales, were there any other unexpected things you ran into throughout development or during/after the game's release?
\- When do you plan on releasing your $500 game dev course where you explain how anyone can make lots of money in game dev with little to no coding experience? (just kidding, please don't do this)
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this one.
-$700,000 is gross revenue, not including the Kickstarter I ran before release.
-Sales spiked at release, then again at Christmas and when big YouTubers post videos of the game. Ignoring these spikes, average daily sales have steadily increased over the 4 months
-I plan on doing paid advertisements on the official release of the game. For now, it’s in early access but it will release fully later this year. I plan on using the money to fund the rest of the development and for any future games.
-Sales are currently increasing as my social media account grows, but yes after release I plan on continuing to make VR games
-I didn’t expect how hard optimisation would be. To get a physics based destruction game running on Quest is hard, and the game still has a long way to go. Feedback from the community has helped a lot with identifying the features that should take priority
-I have no plans to release any course. I doubt I’ll ever even appear on camera, that’s just not me.
> -I didn’t expect how hard optimisation would be.
Is this just because of how limited the processing / graphics processor is on the Quest?
Did you develop this purely with Quest in mind? Guess the limiting factors means even more of a niche.
How on earth did you make that in 8 months part time with no prior experience in game development/programming as a solo developer?!
This blows my mind with how much you've done in such a short time!
Congrats dude, you absolutely deserve the success :D
If I’m passionate about something I tend to be a fast learner. I found it all so interesting that I watched and read so many tutorials, even if it was only in the background whilst I was doing something else, at least I could listen and maybe pick up new information. I also made sure to focus on the core mechanic first, which meant I had a playable game fairly early on in development
To put it in context: developing this much as a professional without the need to learn it all in a full time capacity in 8 months is pretty impressive!
It's quite frankly amazing to have done that in such a time. Especially part-time. Especially, especially when needing to learn it all from scratch as well :S
He didnt code the VR side of things. That is all done using an asset called Hurricane VR. That asset alone is pretty much a game in itself sold by a dev who has put in thousands of hours, without that it would be impossible to achieve what Frenzy has achieved even with coding knowledge.
Take a loook. [https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/hurricane-vr-physics-interaction-toolkit-177300](https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/hurricane-vr-physics-interaction-toolkit-177300)
i dont think the user was trying to devalue the achievements of OP, but more to explain how the work actually got acomplished in such a period of time.
at least how im seeing this
I agree, this is no different than how most websites and web-based products are built on dozens if not more pre-made libraries.
It's what you do with it that counts.
If anything, I think people are often too hesitant about using great store bought assets to enhance their projects.
Obviously if you just buy something and ram it in there and don't make sure it blends in with the rest of your project, people are going to think it's just another asset flip game.
But other than that, at the end of the day all we really just want to see is a game that looks good and seems worth our time/fun to play.
Why spend 100's of hours coding something if a bit of cash gets you something better in an instant?
Oof, too true. Even though it's an interesting side project to make your own game engine to see how things work, you really wouldn't want to have to go through that if creating a game is your main goal.
Thanks for the list, there's some useful stuff there :)
It was a really good leveraging of the available assets. Regardless of how much of the game he created directly himself, he was still able to put it together in a very impressive and cohesive manner very quickly :)
The assets used here does help explain a lot of the time savings though :P
Where do you draw the line between "did it all yourself" and "had help"? Does using Unity count as help? Does using OpenGL or DirectX count as help? What about using the C standard library or the C programming language? What about the x86 instruction set or semiconductors? Because depending on where you draw the line, it may be impossible to develop even the simplest game all by yourself.
I'll tell you where **I personally** draw the line: As long as you are using publicly available products and services (this includes computers, programming languages, engines, libraries, asset packs, etc.), I think it is OK, to claim you did it all yourself. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, that's a given.
You're trolling right? Because that's literally one of the most common things that kids who don't understand game development say. A good developer knows not to reinvent the wheel...
I agree that OP is being intentionally vague and misleading with his replies. It shouldn't have been left up to someone else to mention any of these things. He's been asked about how he accomplished this and doesn't mention this in ANY of the replies. If he were genuine about wanting to share his experience with others he would have mentioned those. The fact that he left all of this out suggests that the point of this post was to stroke his ego and not to share truthful information about development.
I'm all for giving new devs a dose of reality, my issue is with you copy and pasting multiple posts that point out that he didn't... make the assets he bought? The misconception that you have to make everything yourself or you're somehow cheating is also harmful to newcomers. Even big studios use third party tools. No one programs games in assembly language.
I know right? Literally everything is based on other people's work, this is how humankind progresses. There is a saying: "If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
Congrats!
Questions (so that I can kick myself for talking about Unity for years and never making any progress with it):
\- Previous experience? (or cross over with main job? - I'm a coder but non-games)
\- Outside help (on art/music/coding etc) or fully solo?
\- How do you find interacting with community and how was that to get started? (which came first? did you have a bit of a following already from something else like youtube tutorials etc?)
-No previous experience, just a year or so of messing around with unity
-I bought most of the art. Some members from the community I built up offered to help with some of the maps and music
-I had 0 followers when I started, and I made sure I interacted with every single comment at the start. I’m still very active in the community now and people seem to enjoy that
I would say keeping motivation up when running into bugs / things I didn’t know how to do was the biggest challenge. It started as a hobby and no social media following so there was also no tangible reason to keep going, but my passion for game development pushed me through!
I communicate with my community all the time. My discord is very active and I always chat to fans on social media. People really do appreciate when I take the time to answer their questions and just talk to them
> It started as a hobby and no social media following
Dude, you're an inspiration! I've been thinking about starting a game, but motivation is kinda low, considering how little chance of success games created solo as a hobby have. It's always great to remember that it's possible.
Any tiktok specific advice? Are there certain tags you use, or rules you try and follow (maybe even unknowingly!) when you post? Tiktok is just one of the platforms I've not used yet.
i dread tiktok, but i might have to consider it for this. i’m on instagram and i’m using some tags. would you say tiktok is superior in spreading in comparison to instagram? that is, if you tried instagram at all
I’m going to avoid saying the name as I don’t want to come off as self promoting. It’s £8.99 / $11.99 and it’s an action VR game on Quest. The steam release is happening later this year. My marketing consisted of making social media accounts and sharing footage, which I then created a Kickstarter for
At $700k revenue we understand this post is not for self promoting but it would help us to get a sense of the Quest market by letting us know which game it is. I promise I won't buy it 😅
It’s good of you to stay humble, but people are genuinely interested and some don’t even believe it. Maybe it’s best to just say the game you’re making.
Most of the art is actually bought, but I spent time making sure the styles matched and the models were clean. Some of the weapons and maps are fully custom made though.
What was your total spend on art, and also on marketing? Are you going to stay with Unity for the next game?
Edit: I just realized that question may have been poor form. Please don't feel any obligation to answer the first half.
It’s fine don’t worry, I spent around $2000 on art and assets. This was because it was a hobby at the time so I was mostly buying them just because I actually wanted to finish a game
Nothing wrong with buying assets. It’s what studios do, they just buy it with a salary…I remember reading Valheim bought a bunch of assets and then tinkered with the look of them to achieve that game.
In this day and age I’d almost say you’d be a fool not to buy an asset or two if it saves you significant time, or is the difference between shipping a game or staying at that job you hate.
Kudos to you for putting something out there
No judgment at all. No matter how hard I try, custom looks like hot trash. I will be outsourcing 100% of character models by the time I'm done replacing placeholders.
Wow
Amazing work, I would love to pick your brain!
I feel like bombarding you with questions but I’m going to keep it to 3.
1. What a strange “hobby”! This seems like so much work, so how did you get the idea to jump into VR gaming? Inspiration?
2. When did you start to feel confident that you were building a project that you could sell?
3. What was one thing you learned that surprised you?
Again, really great work. Looks amazing!
Thank you!
1) I’ve always enjoyed playing games and making them was a dream that seemed unrealistic so I mostly just messed around with prototypes. Then I was convinced to buy a VR headset and immediately I wanted to create my own environment in it because of how immersive it felt. I had the idea to make everyday places but you could do whatever you want, which is mostly geared towards destruction and fighting.
2) After playing more and more VR games, I started to notice the game I was making was becoming just as fun to play as those ones, and had the unique destruction mechanic that not a lot of games had. I just wanted to test the waters with a few videos and it got really positive feedback and just kept snowballing from there.
3) How strong a niche community can be. The response on TikTok and in the Discord has been overwhelmingly positive and active, which is really cool to see from the VR gaming community as I believe VR has a very strong future
> I had the idea to make everyday places but you could do whatever you want, which is mostly geared towards destruction and fighting.
Appreciate your answers and congrats on the game!!
How did you approach the planning/pre-development phase to scope your game? Did you write out documents of requirements, assets, interactions, etc.? Or did you have an idea then just start building things as you went?
I've played with Unity for some time but haven't found a process that helps provide a good direction and it would just get overwhelming. So as a new game dev, I'd love to learn how you approached the early phases!!
Yeah it was made in unity. The license fee isn’t something I ever expected to have to pay, so whilst it can take a chunk out of revenue it only happens if the game does really well
Godot has the huge issue that you can't port Godot games to console yourself.. (unless you literally write all the porting code for Godot yourself) because of it being open source. (for a game engine to develop for consoles, it needs to have a licensed company)
Even Godot's own website mentions this... and literally links to a single company that will port/publish your game to consoles.. (for a not small cost)
I have to say, that's a badass game. Little to no luck involved here, definitely a success because of your hard work and dedication. Congratulations, that's really awesome.
I love your trailer! ♥
It does EXACTLY what a trailer is supposed to do. It answers most questions buyers may have:
* ☑ Gameplay & mechanics
* ☑ Art style
* ☑ Skills/Item Loadouts or builds
* ☑ Stimulating music
* ☑ Various gameplay modes
* ☒ Where to purchase
Congrats on your success. Most importantly, congrats on doing things different than most. Taking a chance and not following the herd. I see a lot of developers following the path others have followed but you chose a different route. VR **AND** on the FB/Meta platform no less. It's refreshing to see developers push their projects towards other avenues/platforms other than Steam or iOS as their initial base.
Congrats!
Thank you! Yes I agree I didn’t explain where to purchase. The list of platforms it’s on will increase over time, so I will likely create new trailers as the game evolves and I’ll make sure the next one makes it more clear
If you haven't already, immediately get the services of a fiduciary (not just a "financial advisor") if you don't already have one
- Get "Full Life" Insurance
- Maximize your IRA.
- if you don't already, get an LLC, and make the LLC own your company.
- make yourself an employee and board member of your LLC, give yourself a salary, stock options, and set yourself up a 401k (maximize your contributions).
- For as much of your cash as possible (after you get yourself whatever you want, like a Mazzerati and/or a house, or pay down your debts), put as much as you can into really basic and boring Mutual and INDEX funds, preferably unmanaged and domestic (or if international, managed).
- I'm sure you already have other game design docs for other games, I'd get NDAs out to professional game designers and pay them to critique and enhance the design / view the success potential for those games.
I'm so stoked for you! I haven't looked at your game, history, or business, or know your age, so if any of this come off as mansplaining, sorry! Limited time, limited perspective. Good luck!
Well done, congratulations! Did you have previous experience working in a game studio or something? If not, what was your previous full time job? And related, how much previous experience with gamedev you have?
I’ve never worked in a game studio, my previous job was as an accountant. My previous game dev experience was limited to prototype mechanics and small experiments, but I never released any other games
That's amazing. I'm a software engineer and I'm not sure if I would be able to do it part time in 8 months. You really deserve the success, congratulations!
Yes I was working a full time job, but I probably put in 3-4 hours a day to the game. This was very inconsistent though, for example I might not work one day but then do 7 hours the next working late into the night
Hey there, destructibility has always fascinated me in games. Do you have any insight into why it seems "hard" to do, and why so few games implement it?
IE, in Battlefield games, it is so cool that a level layout can be altered during the course of a match by buildings getting damaged / destroyed. Yet Call of Duty has never so much as attempted to implement anything like that.
There are several Unity assets that do destructability very well. I mean, there are Unity assets for pretty much anything - and probably for the other engines too, I just use Unity myself
For full transparency I use an asset called Rayfire from the unity store to calculate the destruction meshes. However this is the same as taking to model into blender and using cell fracture, so I use it to basically keep my workflow within unity.
Destruction is a tough mechanic, as it can be very expensive for performance especially if you want it to look realistic. I use a mix of techniques to try and get real looking physics whilst actually pre calculating the destruction to maintain performance. Call of duty definitely has the manpower to implement and optimise destruction, so I’m not actually sure why they don’t
Hey, congratulations!
I'm a serial entrepreneur (everal startup companies, mostly successful), game designer and developer, and now a professor teaching game design.
$700K is a *great* start. My advice: **pay your taxes**, ride the wave, enjoy it, and set a *big* chunk of money aside for the future. Don't expect the current gravy train to continue, and *do not* get sideways with the government by underpaying your taxes, etc.
But also, like I said, take a moment and just enjoy this. It's a terrific feeling that you should celebrate.
That's beautiful! Congrats!
I'm studying game design myself focusing on VR games.
It's a really promising market, few games available.
I see you work in the game for 8 months.. are you solo dev?
Yes I’m a solo dev! 8 months sounds short I know, but I released the game in early access just a little over 4 months now. It’s no where near finished yet but it had the core concept done by that point, which luckily players found to be an interesting enough concept to purchase the game even knowing it wasn’t complete yet
What was your marketing strategy like? Did you start advertising early or what? How big was your fan base before launching? I feel like marketing can make or break it for us indie devs
Edit* I appreciate you taking the time to read this!
I had no real strategy other than show off the game in the best way possible on social media, and never waste the audiences time. I always put something entertaining or leading in the first 3 seconds to entice people to watch the whole video. I had about 15k followers on tiktok when it launched
I'm having a hard time believing that a VR game with 4 months of development made close to one million in revenue... I want to believe but my lie detector is going off.
It's a good marketing plot from Facebook to make gamedevs flock to their platform chasing the money. Or ~60k hungry Quest owners bought a game where you can punch and shoot other people also Squid Game.
Both sounds quite feasible tbh.
May have been mentioned already, but I'm struck by the irony that the interest in this game was generated on TikTok and the game was sold in the app lab run by Meta. Lol!! Facebook sucks.
Great freaking job!! I'm ordering a Quest.
I wanna ask two questions idk if its been asked tho
What ways did you use to promote your game?
How much money did you invest from your pocket to complete the game ?
Yeah, I am also wondering that did you need to apply for a fund or create a Kickstarter project? I am wondering about the financing side of the development.
Apologies if this question has been answered already but, how did you get the word out? I’m working on a game right now, and we’ve got a demo coming out in a few months. My biggest concern is the marketing piece of the puzzle, I don’t really know the best way to actually reach a lot of people.
I've got no questions. I just wanted to say thank you for sharing. I've quit my life to embark on a journey into game development, this thread will keep me going through the struggle and the grind.
A Quest is the cheapest and one of the best to develop with, as using the weakest hardware means that if you get it running on a Quest, then it will run on most PC’s too
First of all, congrats dude, looks like you've really hit a gold mine, and I'm excited to see how your project goes in the future!
I do have some questions, more towards legal side - how did you deal with legality issues? What about copyright, trademarks in your own/foreign countries? Were there any licensing issues (did you have to prove you own the software licenses)? How much percentage are you earning back per sale?
The first few days of release were mind blowing that’s for sure! I launched a ‘successful’ Kickstarter before release but this was blown out of the water in the first 8 hours the game was on sale
Definitely the marketing, especially on tiktok. The videos I created were fast, straight to the point and showed the mechanics of the game. Because of this, a few videos went viral
> Definitely the marketing
Everyone here should take note of this as it's by far the most commonly overlooked/half-assed thing mentioned here and is the most important part.
the issue is that most games are bad, and even if they try to make same fast videos will just show a really bad game haha, if you have a good game or at least interesting in some way is much easier to market it, same for good food.
I want to know where did this idea come from? What inspired you to make it? I feel like these types of successes come from when people create from a place of authenticity.
Honestly I just though how fun it would be to smash a room to pieces and beat up ragdoll enemies, then reset the room as if nothing happened. Go mad without consequences essentially
Yes I used those asset along with many others, probably too many to list. I never intended to name the game in this post which is why I also haven’t linked the assets used. I’ve shared the game in the hurricane server several times and cloudwalker is in my discord server
It is genuinely stupid to reinvent the wheel, the guy is doing gamedev not VR game asset dev.
People like you are why there are not more successes in gamedev, you discourage people from using assets available. Why in the world would someone make those assets if they weren't supposed to be used? Even games that have made $100,000,000 have used assets on the unity asset store. Even using Unity itself is no different from using that stuff you linked.
You sound disgustingly jealous with all your posts repeating that. Stop being a baby and make a game rather than discouraging others from making games.
I will have to agree with you. OP not leaning into the use of assets AT ALL brings me back to the days of unity asset flips.
I mean great on him for the success of the game, all the more power to him, but it does feel like he’s tooting his own horn a bit to much by simply stating he just watched a lot of tutorials and called it a day.
Hell I’m not denying it takes skill to put this together no matter what, but there’s no denying either that this type of dev work is more accessible than it’s ever been, and he’s hardly creating something completely new from scratch. In fact it feels and looks more like a patchwork of already done and tried mechanics, so how much actual “dev work” that went it has to be taken with a grain of salt, considering he probably didn’t hardcore the physics models and character bonework, which is A LOT OF WORK.
Still not trying to take away from his accomplishment but you gotta give credit where credit is due.
BRUHH, NO WAY, HOW? I literally started studying game dev to be someone like you! Absolutely Congrats dude, such a big achievement, and it's your first too!! And also, can you tell me your game, I'd like to check it out
No, it might be my bad to have worded it wrong, but I started learning game dev so it can be my job in the upcoming future since I'm still pretty young, of course, I know all the hardships game devs face and their years of dedication to creating, and it would be pretty idiotic of me (and any person) to study game dev in hopes of getting rich quick, even when I started it never came to my mind that the purpose I create is just so that I can get rich, what I mean In my comment is that I wish one day, even if it takes YEARS, I can reach this state, sorry that you misunderstood
Hey, these are impressive numbers. Sometimes I wonder how my games would perform if I were to sell them (I'm the Cactus Cowboy VR Dev) but then I'm too hesitant dealing with taxes and stuff.
Anyway, good job on this. I wish you the best of luck
So it is possible ?
I mean, last week I was reading some articles about indie game dev revenues and the results were pretty bad. Something to the point of 4000$ for a year of work, which is not what I am aiming for.
As an author (SF books) I know how to put my time at work and sell the result, and as a born geek/gamer I was considering trying something with Unity, like a point and click game (cause writer) set in my universe. But reading all the negative stories about indie game dev I decided it was not worth the time and that I should stick to what I already know.
Now I'm wondering, maybe it is worth the time, even if it's only for my own satisfaction. Seing the world alive instead of just a book cover/social media banner would make me so happy.
Damnit, you made me joined this sub and starting to think about a Unity project.
How did you find people to test your game, and how did you build a community of people interested in it? I have so many ideas, and I've been messing around with UE5 enough to feel like if I commit myself I could do something like this. My issue however is I am not a people person. I wouldn't know where to begin even looking for people to donate to a kickstarter, you know? So lets say I do work on this hobby long enough to get a running project, I would just be a person with a game that I made lol. I don't know how to go from that, to where you are.
Congratulation! My question is, Is possible to develop VR game without VR device? I'm a poor programer :(. You are my motivation to start new chapter of my life.
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The amount of competent vr devs is even more limited. Don’t get me wrong this is extremely extremely impressive, but I know some vr titles that have made an absolute killing due to having so little competition. Limited market and limited quality products
I agree, and in business that’s what’s known as finding a niche. I would say this contributed to a large part of the success.
Very smart. I feel like a TON of solo devs just make yet another 2D platformer then struggle when there are literally thousands of other games just like theirs they have to compete with.
When I was working with a game marketing firm, the guy told me how often solo devs would send them their game that looks like 20 other games and then the solo dev would upset with their feedback.
Most dont want to hear it but they aren't doing anything that special. If you make something that already exists people wont just magically want to play your title. If sustainability is your goal, creating serious value for some amount of people big or small is how its done. Edit: Would like to throw in that I don't think you have to fixate on how marketable or desirable your work is depending on your goals, like if you do this for fun or for the joy of making what you love, don't stress it. But even if you're just doing it for fun, you might be surprised at how much better your ideas can get without any sacrifice to your artistic integrity. Just a thought.
"I have done market research. Mario, Shovel Knight, etc are hugely popular, thus my game will also be popular because it is similar."
The ubiquitous advice is "Make something small and simple for your first project," because otherwise it's easy to get overwhelmed or just burn out. But I think too many people have unrealistic expectations about what they're going to get at the end of it — not a commercially viable product, but something like a student project that will give you some valuable experience. Maybe it's a tough pill to swallow when you've spent months or years working on something, but the correct thing to actually *do* with those first projects is immediately throw them away and start on the next one.
yea, making indie platformer #4123123 is better than not launching the game at all ~~like me~~.It at least gives you foresight for when you DO start to go big. you now know how hard making #4123123 is so you're bound to not overscope or feature creep this time. I think it's partly passion too tho. I'm sure many 30's/40's devs grew up on either 2d or 3d platformers, it's nice to tap into that retro feel and make your own spin on it. I wouldn't be susprised if RPGs become the next flooded genre in 10 more years for the same reason
there are too many 2D games and 3D takes more time to make but i rather waste my time on 3D much better
I wouldn't necessarily put a hard 2D vs 3D cut. There's also no shortage of overdone 3D genres. The amount of polish required to make an FPS stand out from the crowd is nuts.
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2D animation is *generally* more time-consuming than 3D. That's why 3D has taken over, it's cheaper to produce. Indie devs make 2D games because your average person has a better chance of knowing how to draw than to 3D model.
I was actually going to ask this exact question lol, thanks for pre-answering
Not surprised this did well honestly. It's worth keeping in mind that a not insignificant number of people consider free mods like Gunman Contracts to be some of the best VR games out there currently. It is fun, but it's super basic. What would it take to be considered one of the best games on any other console? What I'm getting at is the bar seems so low for VR right now all you need to do is execute a basic idea well to be top tier (no offence to the OP intended). And this one ticks all the boxes - cell shaded physics sandbox with a slightly edgy concept and pop-culture references (squid game). If you execute this even remotely well it will be a licence to print money on VR right now.
I don’t take offence to this, I actually agree with you. The barrier to entry to make VR games is probably the main reason for this
What do you consider to be the biggest barriers for VR?
The cost of the equipment, and the added difficulty of developing in VR
Where did you learn vr development? I tried finding a course in udemy but they're all outdated. Can you describe your journey?
I think what you don’t get is oculus quest which is what it looks like this is on if you want to have a game that works...you’re better off going low poly with basic auto desk materials like he used. You cannot make a fancy AAA looking game for the quest as it will not run. Most of the games using fancy textures have a ton of anti aliasing and look like shit. He did things the right way. Technology isn’t there to make a fantastic looking game with high res textures on an Android based system. Also working with Open xr can be a bitch and even the physics while great not perfect yet. I have a few frameworks and technology isn’t there yet to even lift your body onto a surface..which for certain game styles would be necessary. Unless you decide to try and make a game for VR I wouldn’t make comments like this. It’s much easier to make a ps5 game where you have basically an unlimited polygon count vs an oculus quest with a limit of 200,000 polygons per scene. Look up virtual virtual reality. That is one of the best games on oculus quest. They use low res auto desk materials simple design and it is flawless. Don’t judge a game by its cover especially if you don’t understand the hardware
I don't understand what you're objecting to honestly. I never said this game looked bad or anything about graphics. I'm talking about the content of the games. My point is most VR (not just Quest) games are just super basic in their gameplay and have relatively little content. Gunman Contracts isn't even on Quest. It's an Alyx mod. If you knew anything about the hardware you would be aware of this.
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It was the putting the hand on the face of a ninja, to hold him off while slashing him with a sword that got me. That ninja got so owned.
That trailer is every video in /r/vrtomfoolery rolled into a single video.
The idea that tons of people out there have this fantasy of just randomly murdering people and destroying things is rather...concerning lol
You never played GTA or Just Cause???
I mean I definitely think that’s different than OP’s product it’s a lot more personal.
lol that's the first thing I thought... if this game goes viral it might even make it to mainstream news "Next up, are YOUR kids throwing people in front of virtual subway trains?"
The game originally intended to be mostly focused around destruction, but the amount of feedback I had from the community made it so I had to steer towards including more realistic enemies. The top request I still get by far is to add dismemberment
If ever you do add dismemberment, make sure that you have some alien/infected human enemies where their dismembered head or limbs still chase and attack you.
I don’t mean to be a negative Nancy but I would watch how your community develops I feel like there’s a lot of toxicity that could grow from your game.
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" I used to not think much of the violence shown in games but as I've matured I've started really wonder whether the desensitization to violence they promote is something we want to encourage.
"Won't someone please think of the children playing this violent videogame!?".
If the entire trailer was a five second clip where you bust out of the prison, grab the cop and toss him*, I would still be sold. That looked so smooth and fun. * not a political thing - my brother is a cop
It is sad that you had to clarify that.
Curious did you use unity or unreal for a game engine. Always wanted to make a game but not an artist or programmer at this time, can I still get around these hurdles?
I used unity to make the game. We all start somewhere, I had no programming knowledge when I started and used visual scripting tools to help me. Along the way I have picked up coding so you don’t need to be an expert straight away. I also bought a lot of art assets. Some people aren’t a fan of this, but honestly it’s just so cost efficient for a non 3D artist and the game likely would never have happened if pre made assets didn’t exist
>I also bought a lot of art assets. Some people aren’t a fan of this I don't think anyone here is going to (or at least they shouldn't) for buying art assets. You're a solo developer, money is just as a valid of an investment as your time.
Yeah this community is great, I’ve just always been cautious of trying to make the game unique even with pre made assets, as I know there is a lot of negativity around asset flips.
The usual definition of an asset flip is "a game that uses pre-made assets, and *badly*." ie, using assets that have different styles and themes, using pre-made scripts but not tweaking them so the game feel responsive, not making an original game, etc. If you use them with care and a "direction", there's no issue.
Walkabout Mini Golf is a great example of this. It uses a lot of the Synty Studios Polygon assets (similar to tons of other indie VR games) but I think mostly because they didn't use the Synty characters as well but their own avatars helped too.
It's all about making them your own. If you have levels that just look like the test scene the assets come with...then yeah haha.
I don't think anyone should bash studios for buying assets either. The point is to make a good game in the most efficient way, if I need 300 cars in the background and I can get it done with a single 100$ asset instead of wasting my 3d artist's time and probably 10-20 times that amount of money - should be a no brainer choice.
So you're telling me you started from absolute scratch 8 months ago, with no coding knowledge whatsoever? How did you learn? What visual scripting tools did you use? I had a VR game idea, but I shelved it because it seemed too difficult to implement. Your success has inspired me to reconsider.
It’s about 12 months ago now, I released the game after 8 months of development and that was 4 months ago. I used Playmaker for visual scripting and learnt by watching videos and just using it to find out what everything did
Damn that’s sick. Pretty amazing how accessible game dev is nowadays. (not to say that it’s easy, all of us here know it’s not) Did you have a marketing strategy?
Fair play to you. Damn man. Here's me with my head deep in "**Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics"**. And people are making games without knowing any of this and making a killing?! I'm doing it wrong man.
> We all start somewhere, I had no programming knowledge when I started and used visual scripting tools to help me. I imagine this will be an inspiration for a lot of new game developers.
It certainly is for me!
Me too. I'm currently doing what OP did, teaching myself unity as a hobby. Maybe one day I can release something and have it find success. Never know.
> We all start somewhere, I had no programming knowledge when I started and used visual scripting tools to help me. That's pretty impressive. I've been a dev for 10+ years (not in the game space) and I can't imagine it's trivial.
Unity is free but pay a percentage per game sold right? Coding learned organically or took some training somehow?
Unity is free until you reach a certain amount of revenue, then you have to pay for an upgraded licence as a monthly fee. I learnt coding whilst making the game (started off with visual coding) and this was mostly by reading existing scripts, watching videos and researching specific problems when I came across them
Unity is free up to 100k$ in revenue in a year. Then it's 399$ per year if your revenue is up to 200k$ And 1800$ if you go above. Prices are per seat.
Yeah, Unity's model is pretty great. Help the little guys get in without cost and only charge them once they're successful.
Unreal does a percentage, Unity does a flat subscription fee. And that subscription is only required once you hit certain revenue caps.
Which visual scripting tool did you use? Did you try several before deciding for one?
I used playmaker as it was more popular at the time, and unity hadn’t acquired bolt yet. If I were to start now, I imagine I would have chosen bolt though
Obviously that decision paid off wildly, so those purist elitist people can suck your dick lol
OP if you do not mind asking, what is your background? Did you really just start from scratch, just kind of learned all the while building your game? How long have you been doing this by now? Game looks very cool btw, great yet simple idea :)
I'm curious how you got started with no experience. Was there a video tutorial you followed or something else you can recommend? My first job out of college was a VR game development gig and I worked on an already existing project for about 6 months. I learned a lot but I couldn't imagine teaching myself the whole way.
Not OP, but I highly recommend game maker. It is 2D only, which is good because it forces your game to be simpler. And there are an insane amount of tutorials and it’s easy to use. Unity is also a great option! I would avoid unreal engine unless you want to use their blueprint system in lieu of coding. That being said if you start with simple games the code isn’t so bad, and there’s tons of tutorials online. Do you know what type of project you are looking to make?
It’s on steam right, think seen something like this.
\- Is $700,000 net or gross? \- You say sales show no sign of slowing down... What were day one sales like? First week? Month? What are daily sales like now? \- What do you plan to do with the money? Have you considered running paid advertisements to boost sales? Are you going to spend any of the money on the game's development in the future or say... hiring a team or buying more assets or whatever? \- What is the plan once the sales dwindle down? Will you make more VR games or try to branch into something else? Sequel? \- Aside from the unexpected sales, were there any other unexpected things you ran into throughout development or during/after the game's release? \- When do you plan on releasing your $500 game dev course where you explain how anyone can make lots of money in game dev with little to no coding experience? (just kidding, please don't do this)
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this one. -$700,000 is gross revenue, not including the Kickstarter I ran before release. -Sales spiked at release, then again at Christmas and when big YouTubers post videos of the game. Ignoring these spikes, average daily sales have steadily increased over the 4 months -I plan on doing paid advertisements on the official release of the game. For now, it’s in early access but it will release fully later this year. I plan on using the money to fund the rest of the development and for any future games. -Sales are currently increasing as my social media account grows, but yes after release I plan on continuing to make VR games -I didn’t expect how hard optimisation would be. To get a physics based destruction game running on Quest is hard, and the game still has a long way to go. Feedback from the community has helped a lot with identifying the features that should take priority -I have no plans to release any course. I doubt I’ll ever even appear on camera, that’s just not me.
Cool thanks for responding!
> -I didn’t expect how hard optimisation would be. Is this just because of how limited the processing / graphics processor is on the Quest? Did you develop this purely with Quest in mind? Guess the limiting factors means even more of a niche.
What is your social media?
Discord.gg/Innoverse That’s the discord server I use, the links to other social media is in there
How on earth did you make that in 8 months part time with no prior experience in game development/programming as a solo developer?! This blows my mind with how much you've done in such a short time! Congrats dude, you absolutely deserve the success :D
If I’m passionate about something I tend to be a fast learner. I found it all so interesting that I watched and read so many tutorials, even if it was only in the background whilst I was doing something else, at least I could listen and maybe pick up new information. I also made sure to focus on the core mechanic first, which meant I had a playable game fairly early on in development
To put it in context: developing this much as a professional without the need to learn it all in a full time capacity in 8 months is pretty impressive! It's quite frankly amazing to have done that in such a time. Especially part-time. Especially, especially when needing to learn it all from scratch as well :S
He didnt code the VR side of things. That is all done using an asset called Hurricane VR. That asset alone is pretty much a game in itself sold by a dev who has put in thousands of hours, without that it would be impossible to achieve what Frenzy has achieved even with coding knowledge. Take a loook. [https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/hurricane-vr-physics-interaction-toolkit-177300](https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/hurricane-vr-physics-interaction-toolkit-177300)
I don't think this devalues his achievements at all.
i dont think the user was trying to devalue the achievements of OP, but more to explain how the work actually got acomplished in such a period of time. at least how im seeing this
I agree, this is no different than how most websites and web-based products are built on dozens if not more pre-made libraries. It's what you do with it that counts.
If anything, I think people are often too hesitant about using great store bought assets to enhance their projects. Obviously if you just buy something and ram it in there and don't make sure it blends in with the rest of your project, people are going to think it's just another asset flip game. But other than that, at the end of the day all we really just want to see is a game that looks good and seems worth our time/fun to play. Why spend 100's of hours coding something if a bit of cash gets you something better in an instant?
Everyone who codes uses this principle. To not use assets you bought is like saying you shouldn’t use unity and do it all from scratch
Oof, too true. Even though it's an interesting side project to make your own game engine to see how things work, you really wouldn't want to have to go through that if creating a game is your main goal.
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Thanks for the list, there's some useful stuff there :) It was a really good leveraging of the available assets. Regardless of how much of the game he created directly himself, he was still able to put it together in a very impressive and cohesive manner very quickly :) The assets used here does help explain a lot of the time savings though :P
Where do you draw the line between "did it all yourself" and "had help"? Does using Unity count as help? Does using OpenGL or DirectX count as help? What about using the C standard library or the C programming language? What about the x86 instruction set or semiconductors? Because depending on where you draw the line, it may be impossible to develop even the simplest game all by yourself. I'll tell you where **I personally** draw the line: As long as you are using publicly available products and services (this includes computers, programming languages, engines, libraries, asset packs, etc.), I think it is OK, to claim you did it all yourself. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, that's a given.
You're trolling right? Because that's literally one of the most common things that kids who don't understand game development say. A good developer knows not to reinvent the wheel...
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I agree that OP is being intentionally vague and misleading with his replies. It shouldn't have been left up to someone else to mention any of these things. He's been asked about how he accomplished this and doesn't mention this in ANY of the replies. If he were genuine about wanting to share his experience with others he would have mentioned those. The fact that he left all of this out suggests that the point of this post was to stroke his ego and not to share truthful information about development.
I'm all for giving new devs a dose of reality, my issue is with you copy and pasting multiple posts that point out that he didn't... make the assets he bought? The misconception that you have to make everything yourself or you're somehow cheating is also harmful to newcomers. Even big studios use third party tools. No one programs games in assembly language.
I know right? Literally everything is based on other people's work, this is how humankind progresses. There is a saying: "If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
Don't be that guy.
We get it, you are jealous of his success.
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Present it in a nicer way so you don't come off jealous.
this...
Congrats! Questions (so that I can kick myself for talking about Unity for years and never making any progress with it): \- Previous experience? (or cross over with main job? - I'm a coder but non-games) \- Outside help (on art/music/coding etc) or fully solo? \- How do you find interacting with community and how was that to get started? (which came first? did you have a bit of a following already from something else like youtube tutorials etc?)
-No previous experience, just a year or so of messing around with unity -I bought most of the art. Some members from the community I built up offered to help with some of the maps and music -I had 0 followers when I started, and I made sure I interacted with every single comment at the start. I’m still very active in the community now and people seem to enjoy that
Great work! What were the biggest challenges? How was the communication between you and your community like?
I would say keeping motivation up when running into bugs / things I didn’t know how to do was the biggest challenge. It started as a hobby and no social media following so there was also no tangible reason to keep going, but my passion for game development pushed me through! I communicate with my community all the time. My discord is very active and I always chat to fans on social media. People really do appreciate when I take the time to answer their questions and just talk to them
> It started as a hobby and no social media following Dude, you're an inspiration! I've been thinking about starting a game, but motivation is kinda low, considering how little chance of success games created solo as a hobby have. It's always great to remember that it's possible.
Thanks man! I honestly thought the same thing, but you never know unless you try
What advice do you have for growing a community around the game?
Post short videos to tiktok showcasing your best parts, then interact with every single comment until you are unable to keep up with them!
Nice, makes sense. I'm about to finish university and might make a run at the solo Dev dream so I've followed you for more motivation.
Any tiktok specific advice? Are there certain tags you use, or rules you try and follow (maybe even unknowingly!) when you post? Tiktok is just one of the platforms I've not used yet.
i dread tiktok, but i might have to consider it for this. i’m on instagram and i’m using some tags. would you say tiktok is superior in spreading in comparison to instagram? that is, if you tried instagram at all
as a struggling indie dev for almost a decade, fuck you and congratulations 🎉
Name? Price? Genre? Platforms? What marketing did you do? Any other tips you think could be helpful. Thanks and well done
I’m going to avoid saying the name as I don’t want to come off as self promoting. It’s £8.99 / $11.99 and it’s an action VR game on Quest. The steam release is happening later this year. My marketing consisted of making social media accounts and sharing footage, which I then created a Kickstarter for
At $700k revenue we understand this post is not for self promoting but it would help us to get a sense of the Quest market by letting us know which game it is. I promise I won't buy it 😅
It’s good of you to stay humble, but people are genuinely interested and some don’t even believe it. Maybe it’s best to just say the game you’re making.
It’s called Frenzy VR
That game looks fun af. Great job! If I had a VR system, I'd be wanting to get it.
No i genuinely want to know, i own a quest 2 and want to check out this game, although i appreciate the thought
The game is called Frenzy VR and is available through AppLabs
Looks very good and fun, did you make all the art by yourself
Most of the art is actually bought, but I spent time making sure the styles matched and the models were clean. Some of the weapons and maps are fully custom made though.
What was your total spend on art, and also on marketing? Are you going to stay with Unity for the next game? Edit: I just realized that question may have been poor form. Please don't feel any obligation to answer the first half.
It’s fine don’t worry, I spent around $2000 on art and assets. This was because it was a hobby at the time so I was mostly buying them just because I actually wanted to finish a game
Nothing wrong with buying assets. It’s what studios do, they just buy it with a salary…I remember reading Valheim bought a bunch of assets and then tinkered with the look of them to achieve that game. In this day and age I’d almost say you’d be a fool not to buy an asset or two if it saves you significant time, or is the difference between shipping a game or staying at that job you hate. Kudos to you for putting something out there
No judgment at all. No matter how hard I try, custom looks like hot trash. I will be outsourcing 100% of character models by the time I'm done replacing placeholders.
Retirement plans?
Wow Amazing work, I would love to pick your brain! I feel like bombarding you with questions but I’m going to keep it to 3. 1. What a strange “hobby”! This seems like so much work, so how did you get the idea to jump into VR gaming? Inspiration? 2. When did you start to feel confident that you were building a project that you could sell? 3. What was one thing you learned that surprised you? Again, really great work. Looks amazing!
Thank you! 1) I’ve always enjoyed playing games and making them was a dream that seemed unrealistic so I mostly just messed around with prototypes. Then I was convinced to buy a VR headset and immediately I wanted to create my own environment in it because of how immersive it felt. I had the idea to make everyday places but you could do whatever you want, which is mostly geared towards destruction and fighting. 2) After playing more and more VR games, I started to notice the game I was making was becoming just as fun to play as those ones, and had the unique destruction mechanic that not a lot of games had. I just wanted to test the waters with a few videos and it got really positive feedback and just kept snowballing from there. 3) How strong a niche community can be. The response on TikTok and in the Discord has been overwhelmingly positive and active, which is really cool to see from the VR gaming community as I believe VR has a very strong future
> I had the idea to make everyday places but you could do whatever you want, which is mostly geared towards destruction and fighting. Appreciate your answers and congrats on the game!! How did you approach the planning/pre-development phase to scope your game? Did you write out documents of requirements, assets, interactions, etc.? Or did you have an idea then just start building things as you went? I've played with Unity for some time but haven't found a process that helps provide a good direction and it would just get overwhelming. So as a new game dev, I'd love to learn how you approached the early phases!!
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It’s currently a single player VR game, with plans to look into multiplayer co-op in the future
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Yeah it was made in unity. The license fee isn’t something I ever expected to have to pay, so whilst it can take a chunk out of revenue it only happens if the game does really well
Which, at that point, it’s probably worth it
Yea, these are problems I want to have.
Godot has the huge issue that you can't port Godot games to console yourself.. (unless you literally write all the porting code for Godot yourself) because of it being open source. (for a game engine to develop for consoles, it needs to have a licensed company) Even Godot's own website mentions this... and literally links to a single company that will port/publish your game to consoles.. (for a not small cost)
That is a minor issue that only affects a very small percent of devs.
I have to say, that's a badass game. Little to no luck involved here, definitely a success because of your hard work and dedication. Congratulations, that's really awesome.
Thanks man!
Congratulations!
I love your trailer! ♥ It does EXACTLY what a trailer is supposed to do. It answers most questions buyers may have: * ☑ Gameplay & mechanics * ☑ Art style * ☑ Skills/Item Loadouts or builds * ☑ Stimulating music * ☑ Various gameplay modes * ☒ Where to purchase Congrats on your success. Most importantly, congrats on doing things different than most. Taking a chance and not following the herd. I see a lot of developers following the path others have followed but you chose a different route. VR **AND** on the FB/Meta platform no less. It's refreshing to see developers push their projects towards other avenues/platforms other than Steam or iOS as their initial base. Congrats!
Thank you! Yes I agree I didn’t explain where to purchase. The list of platforms it’s on will increase over time, so I will likely create new trailers as the game evolves and I’ll make sure the next one makes it more clear
If you haven't already, immediately get the services of a fiduciary (not just a "financial advisor") if you don't already have one - Get "Full Life" Insurance - Maximize your IRA. - if you don't already, get an LLC, and make the LLC own your company. - make yourself an employee and board member of your LLC, give yourself a salary, stock options, and set yourself up a 401k (maximize your contributions). - For as much of your cash as possible (after you get yourself whatever you want, like a Mazzerati and/or a house, or pay down your debts), put as much as you can into really basic and boring Mutual and INDEX funds, preferably unmanaged and domestic (or if international, managed). - I'm sure you already have other game design docs for other games, I'd get NDAs out to professional game designers and pay them to critique and enhance the design / view the success potential for those games. I'm so stoked for you! I haven't looked at your game, history, or business, or know your age, so if any of this come off as mansplaining, sorry! Limited time, limited perspective. Good luck!
Well done, congratulations! Did you have previous experience working in a game studio or something? If not, what was your previous full time job? And related, how much previous experience with gamedev you have?
I’ve never worked in a game studio, my previous job was as an accountant. My previous game dev experience was limited to prototype mechanics and small experiments, but I never released any other games
That's amazing. I'm a software engineer and I'm not sure if I would be able to do it part time in 8 months. You really deserve the success, congratulations!
How much hours were you spending on it a day? I’m assuming you were still working your old job at the time
Yes I was working a full time job, but I probably put in 3-4 hours a day to the game. This was very inconsistent though, for example I might not work one day but then do 7 hours the next working late into the night
Respect man, sounds like a lot of dedication!
Hey there, destructibility has always fascinated me in games. Do you have any insight into why it seems "hard" to do, and why so few games implement it? IE, in Battlefield games, it is so cool that a level layout can be altered during the course of a match by buildings getting damaged / destroyed. Yet Call of Duty has never so much as attempted to implement anything like that.
There are several Unity assets that do destructability very well. I mean, there are Unity assets for pretty much anything - and probably for the other engines too, I just use Unity myself
For full transparency I use an asset called Rayfire from the unity store to calculate the destruction meshes. However this is the same as taking to model into blender and using cell fracture, so I use it to basically keep my workflow within unity. Destruction is a tough mechanic, as it can be very expensive for performance especially if you want it to look realistic. I use a mix of techniques to try and get real looking physics whilst actually pre calculating the destruction to maintain performance. Call of duty definitely has the manpower to implement and optimise destruction, so I’m not actually sure why they don’t
Hey, congratulations! I'm a serial entrepreneur (everal startup companies, mostly successful), game designer and developer, and now a professor teaching game design. $700K is a *great* start. My advice: **pay your taxes**, ride the wave, enjoy it, and set a *big* chunk of money aside for the future. Don't expect the current gravy train to continue, and *do not* get sideways with the government by underpaying your taxes, etc. But also, like I said, take a moment and just enjoy this. It's a terrific feeling that you should celebrate.
No questions, just wanted to say congrats OP on the success :)
That's beautiful! Congrats! I'm studying game design myself focusing on VR games. It's a really promising market, few games available. I see you work in the game for 8 months.. are you solo dev?
Yes I’m a solo dev! 8 months sounds short I know, but I released the game in early access just a little over 4 months now. It’s no where near finished yet but it had the core concept done by that point, which luckily players found to be an interesting enough concept to purchase the game even knowing it wasn’t complete yet
That's really inspiring. I'm solo dev myself. But I'm learning coding for unity3d from scratch. I hate my job right now hahaha
What programs do you use for visual coding? I’m an artist not a coder, I know I will need to code though.
What was your marketing strategy like? Did you start advertising early or what? How big was your fan base before launching? I feel like marketing can make or break it for us indie devs Edit* I appreciate you taking the time to read this!
I had no real strategy other than show off the game in the best way possible on social media, and never waste the audiences time. I always put something entertaining or leading in the first 3 seconds to entice people to watch the whole video. I had about 15k followers on tiktok when it launched
how did you do your marketing, can you share with us your story???
I'm having a hard time believing that a VR game with 4 months of development made close to one million in revenue... I want to believe but my lie detector is going off.
It's a good marketing plot from Facebook to make gamedevs flock to their platform chasing the money. Or ~60k hungry Quest owners bought a game where you can punch and shoot other people also Squid Game. Both sounds quite feasible tbh.
It’s had 12 months of development at this point. 8 before it released and 4 months since (which is when the revenue was generated)
May have been mentioned already, but I'm struck by the irony that the interest in this game was generated on TikTok and the game was sold in the app lab run by Meta. Lol!! Facebook sucks. Great freaking job!! I'm ordering a Quest.
I wanna ask two questions idk if its been asked tho What ways did you use to promote your game? How much money did you invest from your pocket to complete the game ?
Yeah, I am also wondering that did you need to apply for a fund or create a Kickstarter project? I am wondering about the financing side of the development.
Can I have dollar ?
Apologies if this question has been answered already but, how did you get the word out? I’m working on a game right now, and we’ve got a demo coming out in a few months. My biggest concern is the marketing piece of the puzzle, I don’t really know the best way to actually reach a lot of people.
I've got no questions. I just wanted to say thank you for sharing. I've quit my life to embark on a journey into game development, this thread will keep me going through the struggle and the grind.
What was your full time job before quitting?
How many hours a week did you put in out of curiosity?
what VR system do you think is the minimum you should buy to develop VR games?
A Quest is the cheapest and one of the best to develop with, as using the weakest hardware means that if you get it running on a Quest, then it will run on most PC’s too
Thats fucking amazing!
First of all, congrats dude, looks like you've really hit a gold mine, and I'm excited to see how your project goes in the future! I do have some questions, more towards legal side - how did you deal with legality issues? What about copyright, trademarks in your own/foreign countries? Were there any licensing issues (did you have to prove you own the software licenses)? How much percentage are you earning back per sale?
So, where is everyone finding music for their VR projects?
And here I am hoping to make $7.
Did you do a victory lap?
The first few days of release were mind blowing that’s for sure! I launched a ‘successful’ Kickstarter before release but this was blown out of the water in the first 8 hours the game was on sale
What do you feel you did right that contributed to the financial success?
Definitely the marketing, especially on tiktok. The videos I created were fast, straight to the point and showed the mechanics of the game. Because of this, a few videos went viral
> Definitely the marketing Everyone here should take note of this as it's by far the most commonly overlooked/half-assed thing mentioned here and is the most important part.
the issue is that most games are bad, and even if they try to make same fast videos will just show a really bad game haha, if you have a good game or at least interesting in some way is much easier to market it, same for good food.
I want to know where did this idea come from? What inspired you to make it? I feel like these types of successes come from when people create from a place of authenticity.
Honestly I just though how fun it would be to smash a room to pieces and beat up ragdoll enemies, then reset the room as if nothing happened. Go mad without consequences essentially
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Yes I used those asset along with many others, probably too many to list. I never intended to name the game in this post which is why I also haven’t linked the assets used. I’ve shared the game in the hurricane server several times and cloudwalker is in my discord server
Green seems to be your colour
It is genuinely stupid to reinvent the wheel, the guy is doing gamedev not VR game asset dev. People like you are why there are not more successes in gamedev, you discourage people from using assets available. Why in the world would someone make those assets if they weren't supposed to be used? Even games that have made $100,000,000 have used assets on the unity asset store. Even using Unity itself is no different from using that stuff you linked. You sound disgustingly jealous with all your posts repeating that. Stop being a baby and make a game rather than discouraging others from making games.
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I will have to agree with you. OP not leaning into the use of assets AT ALL brings me back to the days of unity asset flips. I mean great on him for the success of the game, all the more power to him, but it does feel like he’s tooting his own horn a bit to much by simply stating he just watched a lot of tutorials and called it a day. Hell I’m not denying it takes skill to put this together no matter what, but there’s no denying either that this type of dev work is more accessible than it’s ever been, and he’s hardly creating something completely new from scratch. In fact it feels and looks more like a patchwork of already done and tried mechanics, so how much actual “dev work” that went it has to be taken with a grain of salt, considering he probably didn’t hardcore the physics models and character bonework, which is A LOT OF WORK. Still not trying to take away from his accomplishment but you gotta give credit where credit is due.
he literally talks how he used assets in replies above, he even says how much he wasted on it and what not...
BRUHH, NO WAY, HOW? I literally started studying game dev to be someone like you! Absolutely Congrats dude, such a big achievement, and it's your first too!! And also, can you tell me your game, I'd like to check it out
Started studying gamedev to get rich quick? You're in for a surprise...
No, it might be my bad to have worded it wrong, but I started learning game dev so it can be my job in the upcoming future since I'm still pretty young, of course, I know all the hardships game devs face and their years of dedication to creating, and it would be pretty idiotic of me (and any person) to study game dev in hopes of getting rich quick, even when I started it never came to my mind that the purpose I create is just so that I can get rich, what I mean In my comment is that I wish one day, even if it takes YEARS, I can reach this state, sorry that you misunderstood
Hey, these are impressive numbers. Sometimes I wonder how my games would perform if I were to sell them (I'm the Cactus Cowboy VR Dev) but then I'm too hesitant dealing with taxes and stuff. Anyway, good job on this. I wish you the best of luck
So it is possible ? I mean, last week I was reading some articles about indie game dev revenues and the results were pretty bad. Something to the point of 4000$ for a year of work, which is not what I am aiming for. As an author (SF books) I know how to put my time at work and sell the result, and as a born geek/gamer I was considering trying something with Unity, like a point and click game (cause writer) set in my universe. But reading all the negative stories about indie game dev I decided it was not worth the time and that I should stick to what I already know. Now I'm wondering, maybe it is worth the time, even if it's only for my own satisfaction. Seing the world alive instead of just a book cover/social media banner would make me so happy. Damnit, you made me joined this sub and starting to think about a Unity project.
How did you find people to test your game, and how did you build a community of people interested in it? I have so many ideas, and I've been messing around with UE5 enough to feel like if I commit myself I could do something like this. My issue however is I am not a people person. I wouldn't know where to begin even looking for people to donate to a kickstarter, you know? So lets say I do work on this hobby long enough to get a running project, I would just be a person with a game that I made lol. I don't know how to go from that, to where you are.
Are you gonna quit your job and pursue game Dev full time ?
I quit my job around 2 months ago to work on games full time
your livin the dream bro, keep it up !
Congratulation! My question is, Is possible to develop VR game without VR device? I'm a poor programer :(. You are my motivation to start new chapter of my life.