My first indie title, MechoEcho, will launch on Steam and GOG this coming week. Here are some of the things I wish someone had told me sooner.
1. Timing is crucial – and entirely out of your control.After 3 years, the game is ready, Steam and GOG are on board, and we’ve booked the perfect date when no other major games are scheduled to launch. Then, a few days before launch we look at the upcoming titles on Steam, and we find out that the Fallout 4 expansion changed its release date to be THE SAME DAY AS OURS!!! So now we are figuring out if it’s possible to change everything so we can launch a day early.
Result: Launch for MechoEcho might be Tuesday May 17th!!! 2. Don't make your own engine – seriously.I read that advice everywhere when I started making my own game. I agreed that it was wise not to do it. After all, I was in the business of making games, not engines. But of course, I ignored that advice and still made my own engine! If you are a coder, the temptation can be very strong, so beware: I could have published easily 6 months earlier had I used a 3rd party engine, and porting will take me even more time. Just don't do that.
My advice: What’s the point? If you are like me, you are gonna ignore this warning and write about it in 3 years...3. You’ve got to connect with your followers – which is really hard for an introverted, privacy-loving programmer. I’m really, really grateful for all the positive comments and suggestions and upvotes and general community that people have offered around MechoEcho. I just don’t know what to say back. And I would love to tell all the details about how I’ve been making the game but it takes so much time (partially because I’m a perfectionist – see point 5) which I feel I should spend on programming and designing.
So here’s the thing: Write up whatever is going on and post it. Do it quickly before you overthink it. Your followers don’t expect you to be Hemingway, they expect you to be around. 4. Other games will have some similarity to yours – that will haunt you but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. MechoEcho is a blocks construction game so everyone says ‘oh like Scrap Mechanic or Besiege, so aren’t you worried about the competition?’ You see, I announced MechoEcho on Steam Greenlight before Besiege and Scrap Mechanic – which fooled me into believing I had had an absolutely original idea. It stung a bit when I saw their announcements. But then I realized, Besiege is a proof of concept for us. Turns out, people like putting together things with blocks. And since MechoEcho has a completely different look and feel in terms of environment and music and storyline, and has completely different gameplay (3D puzzle game, instead of medieval siege), players who like one will like the other while finding different things to do in each game. Same thing with Scrap Mechanic, or Meccano and Lego, for that matter. Players don’t want to play just one game forever. The challenge is making sure the game is great, not being the only one in your genre.
Bottom line: As long as you have significant differences in gameplay, other games with some similarity builds your audience. If players like Besiege or Scrap Mechanic or Lego, they will also love MechoEcho. 5. You don't have a producer telling you to stop.I worked almost a decade in the AAA gaming industry. The terrible and awesome thing was that there was always someone telling me when to stop because what I was working on was good enough. My friends that left the AAA gaming industry and went the indie way all have the same issue: we can't stop polishing stuff. Many end up publishing when they are about to run out of money. I put so much into MechoEcho, making sure everything worked perfectly. Meanwhile games come out having taken half the time of mine and just strike a chord despite having some imprecise physics and even misspelled words. I think most players don’t as much care about that as long as the gameplay is compelling or fun or hopefully both.
The moral of the story: Publish already! Players want to play. Make your game addictive and fun, then stop and release it. There’s a lot more I’ve learned but let’s find out how things go next week. Please check out MechoEcho on Steam, GOG, and our site.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/433890/http://mechoecho.com/ 
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