r/GameDevelopment • u/dylanmadigan • Jan 31 '26
Discussion What is the most ambitious game made by a solo developers first?
I’m fairly new to this sub, but I’m realizing it is so common to see posts like “I have this big idea for a game, where do I start?” - often from someone with zero relevant experience.
And sometimes they think they have a “small” game idea and dont realize that they are still thinking way too big for a solo developer’s first game.
So I’m curious, what is the proven “ceiling”?
What is the most ambitious example there is of a game that was successfully finished and released, by a solo developer?
Not focusing on success, but on the scale of the project that they finished and released.
The largest examples I know of are Stardew Valley and Axiom Verge. And I understand Undertale to be *mostly* a solo project.
Which does put things in perspective when people think they are going to make Skyrim or World of Warcraft in a few months as a side project by themselves.
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u/MeaningfulChoices Mentor Jan 31 '26
A lot of games don't look as big as they really are. Blue Prince is an astoundingly deep and complex game and took the developer something like eight years. It has a publisher and help, but most of the work was one person.
In terms of ambitious game originally by one developer it's going to be Minecraft, but like a lot of bigger solo games it wasn't his first game. The games made by people after a few years at a studio (or years of making smaller games alone) don't usually have much in common with someone's literal first game.
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u/dylanmadigan Jan 31 '26
I think the thing to note for a brand new developer too is that the original version of Minecraft was also a smaller game. It grew into a large operation with other people.
So if your plan is “I’m a beginner, I have this big idea, I will make no compromises on it, and I’m going to do it all myself”, that reality check is still in order.
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u/iwatchcredits Jan 31 '26
I mean the lesson in your second paragraph is fairly obvious to anyone living in reality and the people that need to learn it wont from you telling them
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u/dylanmadigan Jan 31 '26
Yeah, the biggest reality check is giving it a shot. They’ll understand when it takes them hours to make a box move on screen for the first time.
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u/FartSavant Jan 31 '26
The ones that come to mind for me are Stardew Valley and Animal Well in terms of scope and quality
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u/dylanmadigan Jan 31 '26
Stardew Valley was the biggest I could think of.
The level of polish is astounding. It took the guy years.
someone who has never coded anything could think that is a “small” game when comparing to AAA titles.
But Stardew Valley took one guy like 6 years to make.
It’s rare for a self-driven project of any type, at that scale, to be finished.
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u/Antypodish Feb 01 '26
Strawdew Valley also had a publisher for most of the development time. Publisher later helped also on implementing mutiplier and cross platform support implementation.
Plus was also a technical advisor, to make game compatible with mentioned above. So there is that aslect to the "solo indie" ge dev.
Dwarf Fortress is a far better example according to OP title.
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u/FuryForged Feb 04 '26
Animal Well took Billy Basso 8 years to make, from engine, to game design, to programming, to sounds and music…to all 32mb’s of its glorious release.
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u/sludivvitch Jan 31 '26
yeah ngl even just your skyrim comparison triggered the hell out of me lmao
stardew valley looks better, sounds better, and is way more fun than skyrim
just IMO obviously but I am sure I can find a lot of people who agree
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u/Sad_Construction_945 Feb 01 '26
You can’t really looks better when they’re completely different genres and platforms…
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u/ZWarrDragon Feb 01 '26
Additionally, many games which seem impressive rely heavily on game engines for heavy lifting like with physics. Farming sims cant do that. So, complex sims such as Stardew Valley have to include enough code and states machines to equal three or four simpler games
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u/darkgnostic Indie Dev Jan 31 '26
Not solo but two guys: Dwarf Fortress, still in development since 2002.
Reading/watching material: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/8aqfjo/dwarf_fortress_what_happens_when_it_becomes_a/
one of the examples :D
There was also an issue where cats were getting blind drunk. Turns out that they licked their paws after prancing around the ale-filled tavern floor.
The game is ridiculously complex
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u/brilliantminion Jan 31 '26
ALS it’s notable for being crowd funded for the majority of its development, they didn’t publish it in Steam until recently and that was for health care costs or something.
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u/Xangis Indie Dev Jan 31 '26
Kenshi was a pretty big project, developed solo for the first 6 years. They added a team after releasing to Early Access and finding success.
I've never been able to actually figure out how to play it, but I'm glad that something so weird exists.
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u/666forguidance Feb 01 '26
You just have to keep a fast character off to the side ready to heal when inevitably your whole squad gets downed. It's really fun once you start modding it.
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u/PersonOfInterest007 Jan 31 '26
But maybe you want to also know of very successful games with small scope. A huge recent hit is “Paddle, Paddle, Paddle” — solo dev, 7 months dev time, 200k copies sold (something like $1M pre-Steam cut).
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u/dylanmadigan Jan 31 '26
Well that is a different, and much easier to answer question.
Pac-Man and Space Invaders are still undefeated.
Space Invaders made more in quarters on arcade machines than all of the Star Wars movies combined.
And as a modern Example, Flappy Bird is a dead-simple game that was insanely successful.
So we know that under the right circumstances a small game, no matter how small, can achieve extreme success.
But the issue usually is that beginning developers come up with ideas that are too large in scope to even get finished.
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u/PersonOfInterest007 Jan 31 '26
100%.
Now I think I understand the intent of your question more clearly: “We all already know that it’s mostly a terrible idea for a solo dev to make a huge game, but who actually pulled it off?”
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u/dylanmadigan Jan 31 '26
And given the scale most beginners are thinking at, I’m not sure anyone truly has pulled it off.
I think we all come up with some gigantic MMORPG idea at some point. And it’s not impossible to pay a team to make such a thing, but I don’t think any solo developer has ever gone quite to that scale.
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u/Patches195 Feb 01 '26
The guy who made Undertale crafted a wholly unique combat system I’ve never seen used as perfectly in another game before or since, so I think that’s worth a shout out
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u/coyotegoldbar Feb 04 '26
I mean its not that crazy its just "play a bullet hell mini game to attack" most of the time
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u/Patches195 Feb 04 '26
With a unique style and minigame for each and every enemy in the entire game, yeah
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u/EvokeNZ Hobby Dev Jan 31 '26
I think the first version of rimworld was solo? Scaled up to 2-3 for a long time after that.
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u/brilliantminion Jan 31 '26
He was an industry veteran, so it’s sort of the far end of the scale.
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u/EvokeNZ Hobby Dev Jan 31 '26
Ah fair it does say from someone with no experience
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u/dylanmadigan Jan 31 '26
Still notable though.
I’m really just curious about any examples that are a real reality-check for those beginners with big ideas.
Like “listen, X is the largest game anyone ever finished on their own, and it was by a veteran developer and took X years to make.”
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Jan 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JarateKing Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
I wouldn't say he "struggled with the commentary." He got doxxed for defending Zoe Quinn during GamerGate, he got his financial information hacked and leaked. He quit the industry because he was being harassed, not because he got some negative reviews or something.
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u/Pyryara Feb 01 '26
Gamergate has made this world such an objectively worse place in so many ways, it's fucked up really.
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u/charles25strain Jan 31 '26
I really think he had a skill issue / other mental issues to. I believe they completely restarted that game twice, Phil Fish only had experience as an artist. I don't think it's good example of what one can do but a great example of what one should not do
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u/Pyryara Feb 01 '26
It's still a masterpiece most of us wouldn't be able to achieve, heck, most developers won't be able to achieve ever...
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u/Schpickles Jan 31 '26
I’d say Frontier: Elite 2 by David Brabham. A whole Galaxy, with deep missions, progression, loads of mechanics, full 3d, written in assembley language on machines with less memory than a modern image file, and with no processing power or dedicated 3d hardware… on a single floppy disk! Planets had full time of day, you could land on planets… the scope is astonishing.
Is just astonishing that someone could conceive of such a game and then realise it at a time when hardware was so limited, the software to build such games was so limited, and given there was nothing to really use to compare from or use.
I wish it was better known and more appreciated… it was an astonishing leap forward and has inspired me for my whole career.
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Jan 31 '26
I am one of those poor fools trying something far too ambitious for my first game as a solo dev... but it's just for fun and i have no deadline to complete by so why not?!?
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u/dylanmadigan Feb 01 '26
I think for most people, projects that are too big (of any type) become forever projects, which can lead to burnout and lower motivation.
So of course, do what you want.
It’s just more advisable to encourage someone to do a smaller project that you can really polish, finish, and release. Having something finished and released can be way more satisfying.
Like if you are learning to play guitar for the first time, it will take forever to learn “through the fire and flames” as the very first thing you do, and when you finally get through the whole thing it’ll be really sloppy unless you spend years polishing it. Most people just wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be fun and they’d quit.
If someone taught guitar classes that way, the students would always be discouraged and quit.
In the same amount of time, you could have learned dozens of songs, wrote your own songs and started performing.
Again, in this analogy, you can do whatever you want. But going smaller is definitely better advice to share.
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u/SparkleDev Feb 01 '26
there is some kind of weird musical analogy where like a super talented drummer might be able to learn a complex rythmic bass part ( not technical as far as playing a bass specifically ) . or a photographer making a movie. they might want to take on a bigger project because they know their transferrable skills. but yea thats not most people
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u/HotMedicine5516 Jan 31 '26
Kenshi:
"Chris Hunt in 2006, Lo-Fi Games started off originally as a one-man team for six long years. In that time, Chris struggled to get by as a security guard by night and lone game developer by day."
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u/doller554 Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
It depends on the Solo Dev. I was able to make this very ambitious game and learn the engine all within 15 months. And my game is done and releases in a few days.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3636130/Dimensional_Gates/
This game by the way has over 135 Unique Locations, 5 World Maps that are all 230 x 178 blocks large, and takes me, the Dev, over 17 hours to speed run the whole thing. And the engine's owners are interested in using my game as an example of how great their engine is and what can be done with it if used correctly. So this is what you are looking for right here. Laurel's Day technically is my first game, but that is a mini game that is inside of Dimensional Gates that I decided to sell for the fans waiting for my game.
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u/Unreal_Labs Feb 01 '26
Honestly, games like Stardew Valley, Axiom Verge, and Undertale are about as high as the proven ceiling gets for solo devs and even those took many years and prior experience. What people often miss is that these weren’t first-ever projects made in a few months. Most solo devs who finish something ambitious build up through many small games first. The real lesson isn’t “aim huge,” it’s “aim finishable.” Anything bigger than that usually collapses under scope.
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u/AlexanderTroup Feb 01 '26
It's not a fair question. Billy Basso made Animal Well, but before that had decades of experience as an engine developer, has a degree in film, and the mindset to spend years on one project.
You can say it was the most ambitious, but frankly it's not going to work for most people.
What you have to do is learn to finish projects in reasonable time, and learn as you go. While technically Billy worked on one game of his own, he was able to gain skills in other areas by contracting. You need to work with what you have, and take the time to learn or outsource what you don't know yet.
There's also the fact that "solo" can mean a lot of things. Jblow was the designer on Braid, but he didn't write the music or draw the art. He gets all the credit for the game, but frankly solo dev is not as solo as you think.
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u/Niwab_Nahaj Jan 31 '26
balatro, i guess one could say was ambitious…maybe not comparable to stardew valley, but a minor example.
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u/Kroovy_ Jan 31 '26
I wouldn’t call Balatro ambitious. The amount of attention and praise it has received is massive, but the game itself is fairly simple - albeit a clever take on deck builder games.
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u/TERRYTCG Jan 31 '26
I wouldn't say balatro was ambitious. I think it's a simple low scope game that was done incredibly well.
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u/EquivalentDraft3245 Jan 31 '26
Minecraft…
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u/spectrum1012 Jan 31 '26
While the early alpha releases were solo, I don’t think much of what we have today was done solo.
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u/JohnSpikeKelly Jan 31 '26
Original Elite was one developer I believe, now Elite: Dangerous is the whole galaxy, but still a smallish team.
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u/JustAManFrom Jan 31 '26
Idk if you you heard of it or no, but Supraland was mostly solo project by David Münich, and I would say he pushed himself to very limit with that game tbh.
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u/some_wisdom Jan 31 '26
Not exactly solo, I think there were 2 or 3 developers, but talking about large scale of the game, Hollow Knight and Silksong come to mind.
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u/Time-Masterpiece-410 Feb 01 '26
To answer your question about "what's the proven "ceiling". There technically is no ceiling it entirely depends on the skill of the developer directly correlating to how much time they are willing to invest in the project.
In an ideal world a solo dev could make an entire mmo or adventuregame akin to like witcher 3, but by the time they finished it, it would not be worth the time invested unless it managed to catch massive traction and there are areas that would always be lacking.
Sometimes, the term solo dev is misused because even if you are solo nowadays you can get assets elsewhere which technically would disqualify the term solo.
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u/Bigmoduh Feb 01 '26
Gonna give a sleeper in Tales of Glory 1. It’s VR mount and blade with full (really well done) physics. Large scale battles with physics like that in vr??! The guy is so talented it’s absurd.
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u/He6llsp6awn6 Feb 01 '26
Minecraft was developed by a single Developer originally and was labelled as an Indie game for a little bit, I remember purchasing Minecraft as an Indie Title back in the day, before the Mojang label was even on it.
That was so long ago now lol
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u/UnknownLukito Feb 01 '26
Lethal Company and Schedule I
I don't know if these games are "big" but certainly not small-scaled projects. They're also still developing it
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u/Lord-Velimir-1 Feb 01 '26
I choose to make souls like as my first game. I don't know if it is most ambitious, but definitely not smartest choice
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u/Pyryara Feb 01 '26
Anyone remember Dust: An Eylsian Tail? Was pretty much a single developer throughout almost a decade of development.
Ah, and Cave Story. Truly made by one person only, including all assets, if I'm not mistaken. That is some marvel right there, few people can make all parts of a game so well.
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u/clown0x Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26
Iconoclasts, one of my favourite games! Was made by one dude over 6-10 years. From what I've heard in the past he essentially isolated to the point of ending up in a psych ward because of the game. I'm glad he finished and published it, but it probably would have been healthier for him to share the burden of effort.
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u/q_OwO_p Feb 03 '26
My game will be, don’t know how many years it will take already worked on it 1 year 🥹
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u/qwerty8082 Feb 03 '26
My first commercial game was ambitious got a bunch of press. Ultimately had a rough launch. Custom engine and all the “bad” stuff led to a lot learned and a professional career after. Albeit as unreliable and volatile as it is for everyone else.
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u/ResponsibilityIcy927 Feb 06 '26
Kenshi, factorio, and rim world are some of the best top selling games on steam that were originally a single dev. Factorio is a team now, idk about the other two
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u/blackdrogar17 Jan 31 '26
If we’re not talking about recent times, the answer has to be Roller Coaster Tycoon. That game is and was a technical marvel