The Plan: What It Would Actually Take
After writing down why I wanted to do this, I needed to answer a harder question:
What would it realistically take to finish?
Not “best case”. Not “if everything goes well”.
But something grounded enough that future‑me couldn’t pretend he hadn’t known better.
How Big Is “A Real Game”, Actually?
Early on, I tried to sanity‑check the size of the thing I was aiming for. Roughly speaking, solo projects like this seem to fall into three buckets:
Bare bones / game‑jam quality
Roughly 250–350 hours — playable, but minimal polish and presentation.
Indie‑releasable (the target)
Around 400–600 hours — solid controls, real polish, stable builds, something you can confidently put on Steam.
Highly polished indie
700–900+ hours — strong art and audio identity, lots of juice, extensive testing.
Most people asking “could I actually ship this?” are quietly aiming for the middle option, whether they say it or not. That’s the band I chose to plan around.
The trick wasn’t picking an impressive number — it was accepting that this many hours have consequences. They dictate scope, timeline, and what absolutely must be cut.
Turning “A Game” Into Phases
Instead of thinking in features, I broke the work into milestones, each representing a real phase of development. This wasn’t about precision — it was about structure.
1. Core Game & Tech Foundation (80–120 hours)
This is the part where everything either holds together or quietly falls apart.
Player controller and movement feel
Camera system
Collision and physics tuning
Death and respawn
Save/checkpoint system
Input handling (keyboard + controller)
Basic project architecture
Movement feel alone can easily absorb 20–40 hours if you want it to be predictable and responsive. That time isn’t optional — it just moves around if you ignore it.
2. Game Systems & Mechanics (60–100 hours)
This is where the game starts to look like something beyond a tech demo:
Enemies (a small, controlled number)
Hazards and moving platforms
Collectibles
UI (menus, pause, HUD)
A simple progression system
This phase is extremely scope‑sensitive. Every extra mechanic multiplies testing, tuning, and level design later.
3. Level Design (40 Levels) (120–200 hours)
This is where most estimates collapse.
A rough average of 3–5 hours per level — including design, testing, and iteration — gets you surprisingly fast to triple‑digit hours. Forty levels at that pace lands squarely in the 120–200 hour range.
And that assumes:
Heavy reuse of mechanics
Shared tilesets
No bespoke one‑off gimmicks
Level design isn’t just building — it’s judging, repeatedly.
4. Art Integration & Content (40–80 hours)
Even with asset packs, there’s real work here:
Hooking up animations
Setting up tilesets
Backgrounds and parallax
Visual effects (dust, landing impact, etc.)
If I decide to produce original art, this number doubles. That fact alone strongly influences decisions later.
5. Audio & Juice (20–40 hours)
This is where the game starts to feel good:
Sound effects
Music integration
Balancing audio
Small but important visual feedback
This phase doesn’t add gameplay, but it dramatically changes how the game feels to play.
6. Bugs, Playtesting & Polish (60–120 hours)
This is the unglamorous but necessary part:
Edge‑case physics bugs
Difficulty tuning
Controller quirks
Performance issues
Iterating based on feedback
It’s also the phase most likely to be underestimated — and the one that separates “playable” from “releasable”.
7. Build, Export & Release Prep (20–40 hours)
Shipping is its own job:
Exporting builds
Platform testing
Store assets
Fixing release‑blocking issues
None of this makes the game better, but without it the game doesn’t exist outside your machine.
What Changes These Numbers (Fast)
Writing the plan also made the trade‑offs obvious.
Time explodes if you add things like:
Multiple playable characters
Narrative and cutscenes
Complex AI
Original art and music everywhere
Console ports
Time drops if:
You reuse known patterns
You lean on asset packs
You strictly limit mechanics
You ship on PC only
None of these are good or bad — but pretending they’re “free” is how projects die.
Why Writing This Down Mattered
The plan isn’t a contract.
It’s a set of guardrails.
It doesn’t say “this will take exactly 512 hours.” It says “if this quietly turns into a 900‑hour project, something has gone wrong.”
Having this written down means:
Scope creep is visible
Trade‑offs are conscious
Motivation isn’t carrying the project alone
Most importantly, it let me answer the original question honestly:
Yes, this could be a real game — if I respect what it costs.
In the next post, I’ll break down the eight core milestones that sit under this plan — not as tasks, but as principles that decide what belongs in the game and what doesn’t.
That’s where this stops being abstract and starts shaping every decision that follows.