Game Dev Evolution: From day 1 to day 1,000

Ever wanted to see where 1,000 days working on the same game will get you as a solo dev? 

Have a look at this time-lapse video showing the different permutations and art styles Rizzo has evolved through up until this point. 

It's definitely continued to get more polished and has grown from just a simple game mechanic to a game with rules, win loss conditions, progress, unlocks etc. Most strikingly it shifted from  simple 2D holding art, to a 2.5D isometric style using a paper engine I built specifically for the game.

The idea was to use a dynamic procedural system that could turn 2D layers into pseudo 3-dimentional objects that could be rotated and animated, and lit, all via code. I spent a LOT of time working on that, which caters for a lot of the slowdown in progress after the first 50 days. It's quite a good example of the Pareto Principal at play where you can get the first 80 percent of the work done with the first 20 percent of effort (I'm probably mashing that principal around a bit, but you get the gist).

The end result is definitely more and more polished, but each extra bit of progress takes more and more work to deliver.

So here we are at day 1,000 - who knows how many more days to go!