How long making game takes in reality compared to expectation?

General
1

I wonder how long should take me making game from my idea, if i expect for it to take me about 2-3 months max, how can i predict real time required based off this idea?

2

Seems to me if you expect it to take 2-3 months that is a prediction of the real time required.

Without knowing anything about your game idea or skill level it is impossible for me to say whether this is realistic or not.

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3

Impossible to say without more details, what are your major features? In general industry professionals will take an original estimate and triple it.

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4

so simple terms - i plan 3 core mechanics - turn based grid movement with A* pathfinding for player, some entities, system where each tile have stats that modify those entities and player + objectives, aka events / goals of the game that player must complete in order to win the run

add main menu + settings to that, and that i plan on making this game pixel art

hope these details sheed some light on this

5

I guess 1 month is more than enough to finish this project.

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6

They do.

I think your estimate is off by at least a factor of 10.

7

oh really :\ nice… not gonna lie - i wanted for it to take a year cuz i can’t publish it, for a year…

do you have any idea how i can make this time stretched as possible, without quiting the game dev from burnout?

8

Hmm, okay. Then try to make it polished as heaven!

learn pixel art like a pro for a month, learn how to make games, learn about game juice etc.Also join game jams when you feel lowkey burned out.

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9

you think it will help making this game unresonably long to make?

10

I think so, but tbh it’s quite unreal to make a game in this long period of time.At a time, you will be sick of working on a project over and over again.
So I’ll say that just make the game, don’t think about how long will it take.Game dev takes a lot of time and patience.

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11

big thx for help, hope i’ll maybe finish this game in more than a year still :}

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12

The rule of thumb I learned working at a game company was that it typically takes three times as long as an experienced developer thinks it’s going to take. I have found that rule to hold pretty firm across software development in general. So. At least three times as long as you think.

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13

OHH MY GOD xD
Nahh man, it’s just tooo much lol

14

If you don’t have experience that factor may be much larger than x3, up to xInfinity. That’s why it’s better to do it the other way around for small projects. Set a hard deadline and force it into that time span by continuously downscaling demands, making compromises and lowering expectations. The best way to do that is to join a game jam.

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15

my problem is that i have experience with coding - also someone decided to invent easy-to-use AI recently so i can solve math problems in seconds, the last factor - motivation maybe, but this is also a problem - i’m making game i enjoy at pretty much high level, so slowing down would be harder than speeding up the process for me

16

Do a game jam. If nothing else it’s a good way to self-asses your actual proficiencies and project-management skills.

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17

I actually posted about a game jam that starts in 2 days, and you get a free class just for submitting a game: GameDev.tv Game Jam May 15th-25th: Free Course for Entering!

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18

tbh, if that’s a concern, you can make multiple games in a year, then cherrypick which ones you want to polish and publish when you’re able to do it.

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19

yk, pretty good idea, i’ll consider that

20

Depends on what u make. If you build an RPG, you gonna die.

I would say with my delusions of grandeur I poked a dragon with a rake and subsequent got burnt with fire and sat on.

I think join a game jam that forces you to do something in a week on itch.io based on a theme.

It helps really. You will learn shit u never knew like how to make menus and credit pages.

But first, complete your training and tutorial, then based on that, try to build some small parts of your big project like a boss, or a small level first, while u will abandon, it will help u retain the knowledge from tutorials through repetition and well, programming is like English.

In the initial stages, u should code alot to get the core foundations and keywords of it