Finishing an Abandoned Game Project

Three years ago I abandoned the development of the first game I built from ground up. The game was in development for around 2 years. Three people including myself were working on it part time. During the first year, the momentum was good, the game was shaping up to a complete form with gameplay, artwork, ui, and sound. All of us could see that we were almost there, only that remaining 10% of work is left. However, as you might have heard from other game development stories or even any kind of creative development work in general, the last 10% is almost always the toughest bit. In the end, the team lost motivation, our weekly meeting schedule got more dispersed over time, and progress just went to a halt. And so the project was abandoned.

DropIt Characters

Looking back, I really think we should have tried harder to finish the project. Now, after three years, I started to realize how common dropping projects really is. Project started, everyone got excited, good progress is made, the game is taking form, but the challenges that arises during that last 10% and the lack of motivation caused by it just killed the project in the end. I found out that a lot of other projects also got tripped during this phase and never managed to come back. So, here are my few thoughts on why anyone should push back and fight for that remaining 10%, especially if it is the first game development project that is on the line.

1. Finishing Is A Skill

It’s much easier to start on one, two, three, and more projects but not finishing any of them. It is so easy to think that you have gotten a better game idea and therefore justifying yourself to abandon your current project. I believe that often times, that is not really true. Your current idea is probably as good as any that you have. A new fresh idea, not tainted by obstacles and chellenges of the development process, always looks more attractive and therefore more tempting to pursue.

That said, sometimes a project does go haywire. Flawed gameplay, realization of incoherent artwork, and many other things could really kill the soul of a project. In that case, it is probably okay to restart. Just be sure to make a conscious decision about it and most importantly, recognize what went wrong so to not fall into the same pithole on the next project.

I found this article by Derek immensively inspiring on why and how to actually finish a game.

It’s weird to say this when I have not actually finished DropIt yet, but yes, I do believe that actually finishing a game, not just starting it, is what makes you a real game developer. It’s not easy, but it is a skill and experience that will help you finish future game projects. The only way to learn how to finish a project is by actually finishing one.

2. The Game Has Potential

While the game has not been exposed to a wide audience yet (another mistep I took), I strongly believe that the game has potential to be enjoyed by certain audiences. From our test playing sessions, there are at least some people who really gets into the zone when playing DropIt.

To be honest, DropIt is not a game I can love with all my soul. It is more geared towards casual type of games. My passion however, lies with hard core fantasy and strategy games such as Baldur’s Gate and Tactics Ogre. I did not fully realized this back then and do regret it a bit. I fully encourage anyone to work on games that you would want to play yourself. That being said, I do enjoy the gameplay of DropIt to some extent, and that is enough to get me going.

Again, it is often easy to overlook your core game idea’s potential when faced with the hurdles and hardness of development. Reminding yourself about the potential of your game and just work incrementally, step by step, towards it is probably the best advice I can give. Remember why you picked the that game idea in the first place.

3. Sometimes That 1% Is A Huge Motivation Boost.

Tutorial Level Selection Background

We reached to a point where we have so many parts of the game done, but it still does not feel complete yet. The user experience flow does not yet feel right, level design is still a bit clunky, missing GUI pieces here and there, and so the list goes on. It is discouraging when it feels that the development is all over the place and it does not look like it is coming together. Having the project dragging on like this can easily kill the team’s motivation. Part of me definitely felt this way three years ago.

The funny thing is, just two months after I picked up where we left three years ago, there was this time when working on DropIt feels so exciting and rewarding. I probably only made another 1% of progress during that time, but it is exactly that specific 1% that I needed. It is the 1% that started putting the scattered pieces together. That 1% mainly consists of UI and polish work; title screen, main menu, navigation between pages, level selection, visual effects, and so on. Working on only some of these allowed me to see the game coming together and validating my intent to finish the game, “it does actually comes together”! I would definitely recommend not isolating yourself on a single hard algorithm problem for months and months. Take a break, get some polish done, put a few UI pieces in place. While it may seem like the are not the very core parts of your game, guess what, they are. Without them, the game will not be complete. The game will definitely not have the same feel.

So..

So that’s it, just a few thoughts on why I decided to continued working on DropIt. The goals is to get the game out so people can actually play it. With all this work, the game deserves to actually be played by people. I hope you too will push that extra mile to get your game to completion.

DropIt is a semi casual game about dropping hammers to kill enemies. You can check out the demo here.