Hi everyone! I'm pretty much new to everything regarding game development/design, and programming in general. I know it's not going to happen anytime soon, as I still have a lot of learning to do, but eventually I want to be able to develop/design games for mobile devices. Something like Bloons TD 5 Mobile( so a tower defense game) and Castle Clash (a society building game.)

I know I am an extremely long way from making anything like those games, but I was just wondering... Is it even possible for a one man team to make games like those? And if possible, about how long would it take your average person (with no day job) to make something like that?

As I said I'm new at this, so if I left out any needed information, just say so and I wil reply as soon as I see it. I look forward to learning a lot here, and this will be the first of many questions that I will probably have!

1. As a one man team, would it be possible to make these kind of games?
2. how long would it take your average person (with no day job) to make something like that?

1. Anything is possible.
2. Most mobile games take 3 to 6 months to make with a team of 4 or 5. So, one person could do it in 12 to 30 months... after the learning curve (which might take 4 years) (that's the length of a college education).

I haven't played either but Bloons seems to be the more straightforward one and Castle Clash looks like it might be a bit more involved. The good news is that either one looks like it could easily be done by one guy, the biggest stumbling block would be the art and sounds though. But if you were to pillage free online resources for your assets you could code something like Bloons in a month or two for, if you knew what you're doing (conservative estimate, some people could code it in a day, YMMV). Since you do not have any experience or knowledge of the languages yet, I'd plan for six months.

Look at things that can help you speed it up - Game Maker, Unity (which supports Android and iOS), or some other software like that.

It also largely depends on how polished the product that you want to ship is. Usually its the polish that consumes the most time out of anything, and its also probably responsible for how well your customers receive your game to a very large degree. Having done most of it a few times, I can probably knock together a very functional console-style JRPG in 3 months or so if I were able to dedicate myself full-time to it. But for me to get from there to a product that's really polished in terms of its implementation, together with the *game* and its assets polished to a reasonably degree is probably another 9-18 months time, depending on the number of playable hours I hope to provide.

A polished game usually takes about 4-10 times longer to make than does a stable and mostly feature-complete prototype of it.

Wow guys, thanks for the quick replies! At least now I have an estimate for a (very) long term goal! I kinda figured that the polishing would take the longest, but I think it would just be nice to have the general idea out of my head and onto something.

It also largely depends on how polished the product that you want to ship is. Usually its the polish that consumes the most time out of anything, and its also probably responsible for how well your customers receive your game to a very large degree. Having done most of it a few times, I can probably knock together a very functional console-style JRPG in 3 months or so if I were able to dedicate myself full-time to it. But for me to get from there to a product that's really polished in terms of its implementation, together with the *game* and its assets polished to a reasonably degree is probably another 9-18 months time, depending on the number of playable hours I hope to provide.

A polished game usually takes about 4-10 times longer to make than does a stable and mostly feature-complete prototype of it.

Aye. It's like sculpting a statue. The shape emerges quickly, but the details take forever.

Aye. It's like sculpting a statue. The shape emerges quickly, but the details take forever.

Upvote for that. I hadn't heard it expressed that way before, but its dead on.

Aye. It's like sculpting a statue. The shape emerges quickly, but the details take forever.

Upvote for that. I hadn't heard it expressed that way before, but its dead on.

Except when its a game the statue likes to randomly change shape and disintegrate for no obvious reason. It also gets into a fist fight with you when you want to try and take a rag to it to polish it.

But yeah, I would say the polishing of the game is by far the hardest part and can be even worse than the 80/20 rule. Programmers get to don armor and go to war with the bug invasion while the artists, designers and audio teams all whip out buffing wheels and chainsaws and try to make that game not poke you in the eye so much. The little things really do pile up like boulders even on a small one person game.

I am highly inspired by the Tiny Wings story.

Also, Temple Run is mostly two people.

I can program these games, but I'm unable to design something so elegant and addictive on my own. Plus, overall execution, clarity of thought and proper marketing..

There's lots to think about and I wish you all the best. Never stop learning :)

To be honest, a lot of your time is going to depend on your design and how sound it is. On my project (www.open-tactics.com, for the curious), much of the churn and work has been related to trying to hammer out a good game design, with the code necessarily following, and in some cases being ripped out and reworked. For a game like Bloons, if you start with a good design and architecture, I think that the rest of the problems should take care of themselves. I would strongly suggest keeping your code as modular as possible...make it so that you can change out one implementation with another. Mike McShaffry's Complete Game Development goes into this in some detail, and there is a lot of additional information out there. Don't fall into the trap of bad OO design, where everything is normalized to death. Study up a bit on dependency injection...it will save you a lot of grief. Good luck and remember that the best part of game development is having fun.