It's been just over two weeks since I released What's Left Behind, so as indie law dictates, it's time for a postmortem!

Overview
What's Left Behind has had two different lives: the first, running from mid-2018 to late-2019, was never released for a variety of reasons. The second, what you've (likely) seen and played, began work circa April 2020 after a short break, during which I created Brian's Soccer Simulator. While the broad strokes between the two versions are similar (post-apocalyptic city-builder), the actual bones are completely different and everything in the released version was created from scratch post-restart in April.

The Beginning

Work on the project that would eventually become What's Left Behind actually began back in mid-2018 as a completely different project. I set out to see if I could create some sort of non-violent game about surviving a zombie apocalypse. What came out of it was a quasi-prototype for a turn-based, stealth-oriented, zombie apocalypse game where you tried to guide your character through a level without alerting the zombies to your presence. While I liked the idea, what came out of it was, unfortunately, not something I felt I could turn into a fully-fledged game at the time, mostly due to my own inexperience in game development. As such, while considering how I might still be able to work on something post-apocalyptic that fit my ethos (Make games that I want to play), I had the brilliant idea of pivoting to a city-builder.
When diving into this, I did not take the time to actually map out the project, which is something that is relatively common. I like to find it as it goes. There are pros and cons to this, which I'll dig into later.

The Details

The Budget - Going into this project, like all my previous projects, I had a budget of exactly $0. Unfortunately for me, I can't actually do everything, as much as I might like to think I can, so I did end up bringing Cai Jones on to do audio. This was a great decision, as Cai created a better soundtrack for the game than I ever could have. In addition to Cai, there was a fee to get the game onto Steam as well as some last minute artwork that was commissioned, which serves as the cover image for the game both on Itch and Steam.

The Schedule - I am notoriously bad at making plans, not just in terms of creating schedules but also in terms of planning out my games before I start making them. When I start my new projects I tend to like to go with the flow and see where it takes me. I do feel that this can be beneficial for the creative process, but it's absolutely awful for trying to complete a game (or any project, really). Start to finish WLB took me about 9 months. While I cannot know with certainty, in retrospect a proper plan for the outset would have save me somewhere along the lines of 3 to 6 weeks.

The Tools - I used Unity to create the project, ending with version 2019.3.3f. Models were created in Blender while texturing was obtained via textures.com with GIMP for texture editing. Animations were mostly done manually through Unity's animator, though the walk cycles for settlers were generated via Adobe's Mixamo 

What Went Right?

Overall I'm very happy with how the project turned out. If there are a few things I'd peg as truly having gone the best, they'd be:

• Audio - Bringing Cai on to create the audio (both the soundtrack and the effects) was honestly one of the best decisions I made. Cai's own feedback was that he was happy the proper tone was established for the music, and I'd have to concur.
• Restart - Starting the project from scratch wasn't easy, but I think it was the best thing to do. While I (still) didn't have a hard and fast outline, my successes and failures from the first version of the project heavily informed my decision making the second time around and helped a minimum viable product come together in just a couple months.
• Marketing - While I got on this game late (I hadn't truly intended to do marketing at all, but was persuaded otherwise by several people, including Cai), the marketing overall went well. I used Instagram and Twitter account for this purpose and posted every three days, plus every Screenshot Saturday. I wasn't generating thousands of likes per post, but the traffic was more than anticipated and helped drive Steam wishlists in the month leading up to release.
• Release (Fiscal) - My original projections for release were low. This was partly because I didn't really do much marketing (see previous point) and partly because I was trying to keep myself grounded in reality. I had no reason to anticipate the game (which was truly nothing more than a hobby) would have any kind of commercial success. I expected that I would sell, at most, 30 copies within the first year. These are the numbers as of the time of writing (Feb. 1, 2021):
  
  • 64 units on Steam (plus 3 keys redeemed for 67 total units distributed)
  • 17 refunds on Steam
  • 47 net sales
  • Net revenue of $632 (which I believe is before Steam's cut)
  • 0 sales on Itch

What Went Wrong?

• Release (Technical) - If the financials of release exceeded my expectations then the technical release was the opposite. I had people test the game prior to release, including an open beta, but the testing was still very limited. As such, a number of bugs, including a few big ones, managed to sneak their way out the door. To date, I've released 7 patches for the game, at a pace of one about every two days. Fortunately, those have resolved most of the issues which have thus far been reported and it looks like things are about smoothed out now. This problem could have been avoided by getting a larger testing audience, or even more testing hours on my own.
• Planning - Or rather, lack thereof. As previously mentioned, I don't have a strong habit of making even outlines for my projects, I like to let them flow. That inevitably means time wasted. While there's a certain degree of that in most creative endeavors, since you never ship everything you create for a game, laying out a better plan for What's Left Behind would have saved me some time, likely 3 to 6 weeks in development. That is time that could have gone into testing the game further on my own and could have mitigated some of the launch issues described above.
• Knowledge - This one is easy to pinpoint, harder to fix. I'm not a trained game developer. I don't have any formal education in any game dev related fields. As such, everything I know has been learned on the go, as I needed it. This isn't bad in itself, but it means that I spent more time than I otherwise might have trying to solve problems that arose in development. The only real solution to this, aside from formal courses, is simply to keep learning as I go, which I intend to do. Both iterations of What's Left Behind provided valuable learning experiences, both in terms of how I should structure and manage a project, as well as the generals of game development such as programming and 3D modeling.
• Review time (Itch specific) - I paid close attention to the Steam page and making sure everything was vetted and ready to go well ahead of launch. I had the Itch page ready to go as well, but there was one aspect I overlooked: review. When releasing a paid game on Itch, they review the project page before allowing it to hit the "New Releases" page. People can still navigate to the page via the link, but on Itch (and Steam) many players are going to come across your game via discovery pages. While this wasn't a huge issue, it did mean that while the game technically released at 9am, it wasn't eligible for discovery until about 8 hours later. This is fully on me for not being aware of the Itch policy and something I'll take into consideration next time I release a paid game there.

In Conclusion

Overall, I have a fair bit to be proud of at the end of this project: I completed and released a commercial game (one that's actually sold some units at that); I learned heaps about various aspects of game design and development; I managed to navigate the launch of a game on Steam without any major hiccups. The process was far from perfect, but I'm genuinely really proud of myself for getting to the point where I can write this postmortem about What's Left Behind. If you've indulged me this far, thank you. And if you've purchased What's Left Behind, thank you even more.

Lastly, I have a few important people who I cannot possibly thank enough and without whom What's Left Behind would have not been possible:

• Cai Jones for creating such wonderful game noises
• Astra Knight for their stupendous artwork
• Cat, Cynder, Dan & Ethel for always having answers
• Elijah for all of their support (and constantly putting up with my inane shenanigans). Everything I do is dedicated to you.