A Follow up on why i quit game development and all the pitfalls i faced as a solo dev
After getting a lot of comments asking for details on how and why i failed i decided to make a separate post on my experience with game development
A lot of people asked me what exactly made me quit game development, so I wanted to explain my background and experience a bit more clearly.
I studied computer science, but I never specialized in game development professionally. Most of what I learned came from self-teaching and experimentation.
Before jumping into 3D games, I spent a long time building small 2D platformer prototypes. Some had mechanics inspired by games like Mario, while others were closer to Hollow Knight. This was all before modern AI tools existed, so most of the learning process was pure trial and error. I built multiple small projects specifically to learn movement systems, combat logic, enemy behavior, animation systems, hitboxes, state machines, and level flow.
Eventually, I managed to recreate most of the mechanics I wanted in 2D and realized something important: I wasn’t actually that interested in making 2D games long term. So I decided to move into 3D.
My original goal was extremely ambitious and stupid: a 3D hack and slash game with 10 dungeons, 10 weapon styles with unique animations, 10 bosses, and around 30 enemy types. After some time, I massively reduced the scope down to a single weapon style and only 10 bosses with no regular enemies essentially just a boss rush game.
Even after cutting the scope that hard, the difficulty increase from 2D to 3D was honestly insane.
The biggest hurdle by far was animation, modeling, and asset creation.
In 2D, workflows are relatively straightforward. You can quickly load sprite sheets, edit frames in Photoshop, reuse animation strips, or buy decent assets that already work out of the box. Even creating your own assets is manageable because you’re dealing with flat images and simple frame transitions.
3D is a completely different monster.
A single 3D character requires modeling, topology cleanup, UV unwrapping, texturing, material setup, skeletal rigging, skin weighting, animation blending, IK systems, retargeting, transition states, root motion handling, physics interactions, collision tuning, and animation state machine management. Every animation also needs proper transitions into other animations or the character immediately looks broken or unnatural. Even small mistakes in rigging or weight painting can completely destroy an animation.
And unlike 2D, where animations are usually isolated, 3D systems are deeply interconnected. Combat, movement, hit detection, animation timing, camera logic, enemy AI, and physics all have to function together seamlessly in real time.
That became my second major hurdle.
Individually, implementing features was not that difficult. I actually built a pretty efficient workflow for coding gameplay systems. The problem was getting multiple systems interacting correctly at once. One small change to combat timing could break animation syncing. Adjusting movement could break hitboxes. Changing animation states could affect enemy reactions. Everything depended on everything else.
Near the end, I actually had a decent amount working:
- A functional player controller
- Movement systems
- Attack animations
- A working hitbox and combat system
- Enemy AI that could react and fight back naturally
- A boss arena prototype
But the entire project relied heavily on placeholder assets, free models from different sources mixed with animation packs from asset bundles. The result looked terrible. Nothing visually matched, the combat felt awkward, and the overall experience felt like an unplayable mess despite the systems technically functioning on a very basic level.
At that point, I decided to try solving the animation problem myself.
I developed a workflow using auto-riggers, motion tracking software, and manual editing. Since I’m fairly athletic, I could physically reproduce most of the combat movements myself for motion reference and cleanup. I eventually managed to reduce animation production time significantly using automation tools and AI-assisted workflows.
But even then, creating a single polished animation with all its variations and transition states could still take several days.
And my game needed well over a hundred animations.
That was the moment reality finally hit me.
After properly planning everything out, I realized I had only two real options:
Either spend thousands of dollars hiring professional artists and animators, or spend years of my life learning and producing everything myself.
At this stage of my life, neither option was realistically possible.
So I decided to cut my losses and walk away from the project.
I don’t regret trying. If anything, the experience gave me a massive amount of respect for professional game developers. People seriously underestimate how difficult modern 3D game development actually is. There’s a reason studios have entire teams dedicated solely to animation, rigging, combat systems, AI, environment art, VFX, technical art, optimization, and gameplay engineering, and even then games still take years to finish.
To everyone still pursuing the dream: I genuinely respect the grind, and I hope your projects succeed.