Is it possible to develop two games at the same time?

[WayneDwayne]

I haven't seen someone do this, just starting a project and abandoning it.

I have a project that I wanna release. It has completelya different story, fetishes and artstyle.

I really wanna make two, because I have another idea for a game that I wanna make.

One of them is VN with 3d graphics , and one of them is Sandbox with 2d graphics. The VN will be my main priority, but I also really wanna make the sandbox.

I'm a student, still, I can give like 2-3 hours per day to development in weekdays. And maybe a total of 16 hours on the weekends.


Would you recommend me to try this?

 

[kytee]

It's a recipe for disaster. Most devs can barely handle one project full-time with no other obligations, let alone a student with only 20-30 hours a week. Choose one project, the easier of the two, and work on that.

 

[Ashira13]

I haven't seen someone do this, just starting a project and abandoning it.

I have a project that I wanna release. It has completelya different story, fetishes and artstyle.

I really wanna make two, because I have another idea for a game that I wanna make.

One of them is VN with 3d graphics , and one of them is Sandbox with 2d graphics. The VN will be my main priority, but I also really wanna make the sandbox.

I'm a student, still, I can give like 2-3 hours per day to development in weekdays. And maybe a total of 16 hours on the weekends.


Would you recommend me to try this?

i would have to say it is a good idea to have 2 projects, one main and one side project to work on. that way "you" can avoid a burnout when getting bored or having a "brainfreeze". that being said, communication with "fans" about which project is being currently worked on, and why, is of the outmost importance. there are several developers that is doing this, and they are doing it well. better to NOT rush perfection and complete two or more projects than to burnout and completely give up and abandon a project.

 

[anne O'nymous]

What both members above said.

You'll never be able to works on two projects in the same time.
But having two, and switching from one to the other after each updates (game A uptade 1 -> game B uptade 1 -> game A update 2 -> ...) can possibly help you to keep a fresh mind over the long development time.

 

[Cartman-Brah]

with some simple math we can answer this question. the following calculation is completely made up because I have never developed a game before.

To make a quality game, you need to work 10 hours a day.

With this logic, if you spend 5 hours on two games, you will make two games at the same time.

but...

of course this time you won't have a quality game. so I don't think it's a brilliant idea to make two games at the same time.

edit:
I had another idea. this month only develop game a. next month only develop game b. that way in a year you will have 6 months for both games. if you can release an update every 2 months you will have 3 episodes a year for both games.

 

[GNVE]

Sometimes it might be essential to your business to have two games in development. When you're winding down the development of one game it is good to have another project in the wings you can keep people interested in you (especially if you are relying on Patreon/SS money).

I have two projects in development because I sometimes feel more like programming and sometimes more like writing/creating art.

 

[| Vee |]

I haven't seen someone do this, just starting a project and abandoning it.

I have a project that I wanna release. It has completelya different story, fetishes and artstyle.

I really wanna make two, because I have another idea for a game that I wanna make.

One of them is VN with 3d graphics , and one of them is Sandbox with 2d graphics. The VN will be my main priority, but I also really wanna make the sandbox.

I'm a student, still, I can give like 2-3 hours per day to development in weekdays. And maybe a total of 16 hours on the weekends.


Would you recommend me to try this?

It's as easy as driving two boats and how confident you're that you'll do it. But in the end your confidence matters shit bcz what mattes is, you constantly have to juggle things around, more thinking/story plot/rendering/pre+post touching, more burnout, more development time, more resources and more audience's criticism. All this is unless you've a team at your disposal. If not than stick to 1 game at a time.

 

[BCK Forge]

I don't recommend it, easy way to burnout

What you can do is release the demo of the first game, see if people likes it, and if they don't, do the second game

 

[GNVE]

I don't recommend it, easy way to burnout

What you can do is release the demo of the first game, see if people likes it, and if they don't, do the second game

To be honest focussing on one project has burned me out so badly I haven't even finished it and had stopped developing for a while. If I had noticed it in time I would have done something else and come back to it when I felt like it. It would probably have been done by now.

 

[anne O'nymous]

To be honest focussing on one project has burned me out so badly I haven't even finished it and had stopped developing for a while.

And you aren't the only one. Half the games abandoned after at least one year of development probably have a burned out dev behind them. It's also the reason why after time all updates take longer ; the dev either advance slower because near to the rupture point, or decided by himself to limits the time he pass on the game, in order to keep the few sanity he still have.

When I decided to become freelancer, in the early 00's, most software companies had around 20% turn over due to burn out or near burn out conditions. And it was peoples doing their job, so with week-end and holidays to chill. But an indie dev do this on his free time, therefore either he's working for his payed job, or working on his game, with no time to free his mind from those two tasks.
Alternating between two games offer that change needed by any brain. It's what someone like recreation is doing, with success, since more or less 5 years now, having two main games, and releasing a short one time to time. And his brain is as fresh as the one of a 20yo stud ; I know it, he understand when I talk with him about coding

 

[Goeffel]

But having two, and switching from one to the other after each updates (game A uptade 1 -> game B uptade 1 -> game A update 2 -> ...) can possibly help you to keep a fresh mind over the long development time.

This is what immediately came to mind reading the question.

I once knew a teacher, her specialisations were math and politics. Whenever math became too dry, too well-defined and clear, she'd focus more on politics, and when after a while politics became too undefined, too "it depends" and "let's see" she'd focus more into math again.
I was impressed at such good planning.

But I think both games would need to be very distinct, in level of story, number/quality of characters, etc. etc. .
Maybe one of them not being "adult", even.

 

[WayneDwayne]

This is what immediately came to mind reading the question.

I once knew a teacher, her specialisations were math and politics. Whenever math became too dry, too well-defined and clear, she'd focus more on politics, and when after a while politics became too undefined, too "it depends" and "let's see" she'd focus more into math again.
I was impressed at such good planning.

But I think both games would need to be very distinct, in level of story, number/quality of characters, etc. etc. .
Maybe one of them not being "adult", even.

And you aren't the only one. Half the games abandoned after at least one year of development probably have a burned out dev behind them. It's also the reason why after time all updates take longer ; the dev either advance slower because near to the rupture point, or decided by himself to limits the time he pass on the game, in order to keep the few sanity he still have.

When I decided to become freelancer, in the early 00's, most software companies had around 20% turn over due to burn out or near burn out conditions. And it was peoples doing their job, so with week-end and holidays to chill. But an indie dev do this on his free time, therefore either he's working for his payed job, or working on his game, with no time to free his mind from those two tasks.
Alternating between two games offer that change needed by any brain. It's what someone like recreation is doing, with success, since more or less 5 years now, having two main games, and releasing a short one time to time. And his brain is as fresh as the one of a 20yo stud ; I know it, he understand when I talk with him about coding

To be honest focussing on one project has burned me out so badly I haven't even finished it and had stopped developing for a while. If I had noticed it in time I would have done something else and come back to it when I felt like it. It would probably have been done by now.

Thank you all for the responses. I will do something similar to the replicate guy then.

I don't see myself working on only one project for years, I want to improve and showcase my projects to the world in multiple art forms.

 

[Pixieblink]

I'm running two games at the same time. In the sigs below. Release cycle is 2 weeks.
Updates are short, but delivered on time. Patrons seem to enjoy it.

Takes discipline. And of course with such a tight release schedule, any FUBAR will result in delaying a release.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Possible? Yes.
Recommended? Maaaaaybe not quite perhaps maybe no but yes but maybe dunno.

Best done when you have two teams in your dev-gang i'd say.
One thing i can say for sure is that rolling two games at the same time is good for helping devs not to burn out, if nothing else.

 

[Pixieblink]

Probably not.

If I wasn't already doing it, I would advise against it. I certainly don't plan on doing it again once the current games are completed. One at a time is plenty.

 

[metalblinga]

I haven't seen someone do this, just starting a project and abandoning it.

I have a project that I wanna release. It has completelya different story, fetishes and artstyle.

I really wanna make two, because I have another idea for a game that I wanna make.

One of them is VN with 3d graphics , and one of them is Sandbox with 2d graphics. The VN will be my main priority, but I also really wanna make the sandbox.

I'm a student, still, I can give like 2-3 hours per day to development in weekdays. And maybe a total of 16 hours on the weekends.


Would you recommend me to try this?

I was gonna tell you it's possible, but then I saw that not only are you interested in developing a sandbox and a 3d game at the same time, but you only have 2-3 hours on weekends to develop them.

Don't do it.
I myself have 5-9 hours a day for my sandbox game, and even that is very taxing.

If you only have that much time and you really wanna give development a shot, start with something simple like a renpy visual novel. You can use Koikatsu or Honey Select for the renders, that'll save you a lot of R&D time.