I'm nearing the end of preproduction on my game, but have been having difficulty putting together any sort of budget estimations. Any advice (or estimates) would be very helpful and very much appreciated!

Right now I'm just a single designer. I can't program or do art, though I run my own successful entertainment company in Iowa, so I've got business experience and a bit of extra cash to blow.

(Please excuse the background image of Tatooine. It was ripped from the internet for mock-up purposes. The rest of the artwork is my property.)

The game is basically Puzzle Quest if you strip away all of the maps, questing, and epic story, and boiled it down to 10 "missions" that exclusively involve the puzzle-based combat, along with some minor character management (swapping out characters on your team).

The game is being developed in Unity for tablets and PC. At the moment it's just a single-player experience, though I would be very interested in adding an online vs mode.

You can check out www.thunderpunchstudios.com for more info on the project. If you need more info please post a comment and I'll be happy to answer. Thanks in advance!

-Woody

A single-player puzzle game can cost half a million or half that. If an inexperienced person is going to manage the project (in other words act as project manager or producer), go with the higher figure due to the learning curve.

Figure American developers cost about $10,000 per man-month. A simple puzzle game could be made in 9 months by an experienced team. You need at least one programmer full time on the project from day one until code release. You need one or more artists from the beginning until beta. You need someone doing audio for one to two months. Your producer should also be paid (and is working maybe half time for the duration). You'll want to QA the game for a month or two at the end.

This might also be useful: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/finances.htm

I'm pretty sure you could do this 150-200k assuming you delegate a producer on this and make sure he understands your vision (and followup with him).

However, if you insist on implementing your project iteratively (which may yield much better results), that pricetag would greatly shift.