7 Game Dev Mistakes that DESTROY your Games!

👍 Learn to make awesome games step-by-step from start to finish.

Original video

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💬 Here's a really interesting video talking about various common game dev mistakes, I know I've fallen for some of these myself, hopefully by learning about them you can avoid making these mistakes yourself.

00:00 Intro
00:09 Spending too long on your first game
01:05 Focusing on Art before Gameplay
04:20 Playtesting just with Friends and Family
08:30 Scope Creep
09:40 Too much freedom to add literally anything
10:37 Prototype new features
11:12 Analyze the games you play and figure out why they work

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Hello and Welcome!
I'm your Code Monkey and here you will learn everything about Game Development in Unity using C#.

I've been developing games for several years with 8 published games on Steam and now I'm sharing my knowledge to help you on your own game development journey.

I do Unity Tutorials on just about every topic, Unity Tutorials for Beginners and Unity Tutorials for Advanced users.

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[CodeMonkeyUnity]

💬 Hi there! I'm trying out a new format, watching a video or reading an article and giving you my thoughts, let me know what you think!
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[izaan]

Scope/Feature creep is the worst. Especially when you are starting out. When you're an amateur, you tend to have low self confidence in the game you're making. So, you add features, thinking that it'll add "value" to your game and make it fun. Worse if you promote those added features as a primary part of your game, even though the game is fine without those. Then, at a certain point, you reach a critical limit. You won't have time to do everything. There's too much features, too many things to balance out. That's when you have to crunch. Ultimately, you start to hate the game you're making.

[stayathomedev]

Hey, someone pinged me that this got featured here! Thanks for showcasing it and sharing it with your audience!

[suspecm]

I worked on a game for 2 years, then I realised that I need at least as much time to finish my vision. I decided to stop and reevaluate my position. I started developing another game with a similat theme that I plan on releasing in less than a year. I'm not that happy about not working on the grand vision but I'm happy that those 2 years didn't go completely to waste because I could reuse a ton of stuff, heavily speeding up the development of the current game.

[BlackPanzerYZ-pqnd]

Your channel's been a true motivator during tough times. Now, my game is ready to shine on Steam after two years of learning!

[disobedientdolphin]

The thumbnail with the crossed out steam symbol is a bit confusing. It seems to say something like "don't use steam".

[lordofthestring]

Regarding working on art first: it's the reason I like asset packs from respective stores so much. I've made a lot of prototypes with asset packs, and it's a lot easier to see when an idea isn't working because it's easy to think 'ah it'll be better with art'. My degree was 3D asset creation, so I love making art, but I'd rather it be something I know is going to be in the full game.

[klevialushi]

"Spending too long in my first game" - why i feel so called out ? 😂

[Gino]

First game was way to big and spend 3 years with zero result. Now I make a small game max 3-6 months. I am now in month 4

My learning goals.
-learn to market.
-learn how to setup a steam store page.
-Get around 100 wishlist.
-keep the game simple. (Working on puzzle game is fir me simple)

And I almost there soon the store goes up little bit late but in the end its what learn. Not how much money I make from this first game.

[PeterMilko]

Well thanks for making me more nervous about my game, wish me luck dudes. Im doing a dev log 🍀

[chuckdude]

Currently, I'm making a short but well-polished 3D game and it's been taking months because I'm making it with the main goal of learning as much as possible about Unity's tools and coding.
I don't know if that is what most devs would suggest, but I'm learning much more than I have had in game jams, where you just have to make things work before you run out of time and end up learning much less.

[sebastianramirez]

I think this is the worst time in the history of youtube for react content, but you're very passionate about what you do and have always made great content so I think it's cool you're doing new things.

[CollidingCapsuleStudio]

My brother and I are currently working on something small(ish) and the grey box art is our bane, as neither of us is that experienced with modeling, but we can't get the feel we need/want unless we upgrade from the boxes and capsules.

Also I'd say we actually have been able to keep the scope/feature creep at bay mainly because there are two people who need to agree on what is good for the game. One of us gets an idea and basically pitches it to other, causing us to spend maybe an hour talking about it while deciding if the game needs it.

Having someone to bounce ideas off from, to share your workload with and to restrict your stupidity helps a lot.

[Parwezh]

Great video, I personally also encountered beginners (myself included) that really wants to develop huge games that can take years as their very own first game.
For me it's very difficult to come up at simple small game ideas that is a bit original. Most of the time when I come up with an idea it really is just a mirror version of an already existed games.
So yeah these tips really come in handy especially the prototyping part first and then going to art. I myself aren't really an artist which is why I focus a lot on art than actually the game/prototype.

For those who wants some extra tips (maybe not all recommended) if they still want artwork involved:

- Maybe just search the theme your game is based on. For example if your game is based on the theme of Cyberpunk then just for prototyping I'd take screenshots of the character and place it in the engine and just prototype with it. So that it can actually be fun and motivating and sometimes hilarious even xd.

- There are also assets of existing games under non commercial license which u can also use just for prototyping cause you aren't publishing or anything so to keep your development progress fun and exciting this can also stimulate you mentally to finish your game.

I believe that prototyping like this also gives u an idea of what extra features you can add in your game, or it can also help you detect that maybe your idea doesn't fit your theme. And to counter these parts it's best to counter them at the earliest earliest stages of development otherwise you'll lose a lot of time and that's depressing.

[kotcstudios]

Lol, cops and robbers!!!
I had that idea years ago!
Ended up in the same place as yours, nowhere!!
Awesome video!

[Notllamalord]

I have ADHD and lose interest in projects very quickly, I most just work on very small projects that requires to me to learn a new programming skill

[ThomasWindar]

About the "Don't spend so much time on the Art".
You pointed out it's not always the case and thank you for that.

It should instead be "When making Art Assets - only add Necessary art".
Cause it heavily depends on the type of game which Art Assets are actually super-mandatory to be made before you make a game.
I am currently working on a game myself where the big part of it is chaining character attacks - and this literally cannot be prototyped with anything but the intended motion.
Fighting games generally run into this issue in a major way - since the animation of the character - and the model of the character - affect the gameplay in a large way.

HOWEVER - here is a tip I used.
Your character doesn't need super-detailed textures. Just give it basic color fills first.
The animations need to be "as intended" - but they don't need to be "refined". So the kick has the correct number of frames and feel to it, but you can ignore some wonky posing or lack of physics on the character or secondary motion. You can tighten those up later.
UI can be very barebones - you will change it later.
Backgrounds (unless you have environmental puzzles like a hidden object game) - can be just gray boxes for now.

So sometimes the Art NEEDS to be "kinda final" - but it can be a bit rougher, cause "the final polish" generally happens when you are 90% done with the art asset, but it takes another 90% time of the work to finish. So you can skip on that till the gameplay is locked in fully.

[suicune]

Thanks! Thankfully, I knew all this already since I've been watching Extra Credit for years but it cannot be said often enough!

[andrewcorbett]

I've never seen Code Monkey's face. This wasn't what I expected.

[dontstopbelieving]

Scope creep is big but I think the lesser talked about topic is scope underestimation. You really need to think of everything. What buttons will you need? What screens will those buttons open, are there resources to be tracked, how do you store items? So many things that seem like “simple” parts of a game can really add up over the course of development.

I thought a 2D rpg sounded like it would be simple because the gameplay feels simple in concept. I am about 8 months in and I’m really glad I stuck it out but I certainly felt on the verge of burnout at points when it seemed every line I typed added a new bug. It’s one hundred percent worth it now that the game is pretty feature complete but I still have probably another 6 months before release. I think I will work on some smaller projects after my current game is released.

I think you have to be really honest when you’re asking yourself whether the feature will add so much to the game that it is worth the trouble of implementing and probably introducing new bugs.