Look at the old arcade games from late 1970s. Pong the original, Space Race, Breakout, Blockade (now called “Snake”), Tank, Space Invaders, Asteroids. These games took 3+ months for one person back in the day, some took several people. That's three months by people who knew what they were doing using the best tools of their era.

We have amazing tools and engine ecosystems, people who know what they're doing can copy those games in days, people who are more skilled learning can copy them in a few weeks.

Catomax26 said:
I'm horribly stressed by how much TIME, EFFORT AND PRACTICE it takes to make a shitty excercise project, and something as dumb as a 2D game that doesn't even have a goal or anything, i mean a simple practice project.

Some of the projects you're comparing against in your post are products that took YEARS for a single developer, or most of a year for two or three people.

Seconding the advice from others, you'll need to adjust your expectations of what a person can do.

A very useful task there is to just build whatever you can build in a one month time-box with the focus of learning your rate. Make a goal of pong in a month, see how far along you can get. Make a goal of Breakout in a month, see how far along you can get. Make a goal of Snake in a month, see how far you can get. You'll learn a lot about prioritizing work, the scale of what you can do, learn about your discipline levels in getting work done, and much more. For many beginners accomplishing any of those in a part-time month is a difficult challenge.

@Catomax26 Stick with retro gfx.

I been barkin' up the wrong tree with my gfx. I've been trying to make next-gen gfx look good but i keep failing. I looked at the top gfx of Unity games, this was decided by Unity itself. And most of the gfx do not seem that great, so what chance do I have.

I believe this to be true… I believe the Unity devs agree with me. Because the footage they shown is very short and handpicked… for example, they show a game called “Population: One”. In the footage, it looks to have great gfx, but when I actually seen the full gameplay of it, the gfx are very mobile looking and GM-tier gfx.

I will continue to use Unity, but i may try to make retro gfx, since retro looks better than next-gen anyway.

I believe next-gen gfx are inherently not so good gfx, but it is not so simple as that. I believe there are some next-gen gfx that are actually “good gfx”. But I have trouble achieving next-gen “good gfx”, i seem to be in the “slop-tier” gfx department.

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Example of what I mean:

This is what I mean by next-gen “good gfx”. Still vastly inferior to retro-gfx, but you can see that something is objectively good about those gfx.

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This is what i mean by next-gen “slop gfx”:

Something about the terrain looks totally off.

And right now I seem to be unable to graduate from the “slop-tier” gfx, since i am not a billionaire that can hire ten artists to make 10 textures per material for me.

@Catomax26 You seem pretty based so I will give you some more advice besides this.

“Learn C++ so you can make games easier!” *makes a quick google* Hmm, Does it work for 2D and 3D games?

“Yes, and it's easy to learn!” *googles again* Wait, does it really work well for GAMES, and not systems?

Let me stop you right there. Your first problem is googling stuff when you should be using GPT or Ai.

Catomax26 said:
Had a very bad time with Paper2D, as it is literally taking a 3D sheet and aligning your camera just right so it fe

Most people say Unreal is trash at 2d dev, naturally you had a bad first impression and this causes you to feel emotionally biased against 2d dev. You should have started with GM5, GM8 or GMS1.4. For example GMS2's IDE is trash so you might have got biased if you started there. (GMS1.4's IDE is also trash, but it looks like it isn't, so it overall feels better to use.)

I think the only way NOT get lost and completely lose interest in the infinite sea of game development, is to accept that it take years to go to the point where you will be able to make the games you plan now.
I beginned 2 years ago, and im still far away from the games i want to develope.
And i wont be able to make them alone.
But now after 2 years coding is fun. maybe not the coding itself, but being capable of implement the things i plan. Easy stuff like an inventory system combined with an armor / clothing system that works on a 3d animated character.
I have the big plans for my games. I writed them down, saved them and now im learning the basics.
Game Design is a huge thing, especially to learn any aspect of it.
So go step by step. Learning anything at the same time when you have to go to school or work is imposible.
For me it helped a lot to first start learning the c# basics. and then dive into Unity and game design.
And there wont be a shortcut. no matter what engine or language you want to use. You have to go through all the boring training stuff.

Catomax26 said:
It's not fair

Welcome to life…

life is hard, anything worth it will take time and effort, but it's also in your expectations, modulate your expectations.

Look up ZPD. zone of proximal development.

If however, none of it is fun to you, and it ALL feels like a pointless grind, maybe this is not for you?

Sometimes it takes people 2x or 3x the effort and time to do the same thing another person does and achieves in 1x. If that is your case, maybe your not focusing on your strengths? maybe others just want it more than you?

To answer your thread title question, FOCUS

For the most part, this is an industry of specialists. What do you want to and naturally have a talent for? "WHY" do you want to do this?

Answering to yourself is more important than answering to us.