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How do you know when to kill a prototype?

A topic by Impersonal Sky God created Sep 04, 2020 Views: 298 Replies: 2

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So, I've been working on my first game concept (see my latest dev log: https://itch.io/t/957732/space-factory-week-4-the-namaning-luxury-semi-automated...)

Next week I have my declared deadline to go/no-go on further work, as commiting to a firm decision point forces me to really think about if its worth switching to something new or not.

As happens, I have doubts about the concept as executed and am edging towards ditching it in favour of a new idea I have that seems like it'd be better.

I guess my question is how do you determine if a prototype needs to be killed for now at least, or if your doubts are too premature.

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Afloof.devModerator4 years ago(+3)

The question it, what is your aim?

Are you trying to earn as much profit as possible? Or to create something because you enjoy it? Or something in between?

I’ve made games in the past that thought they would flop, but released them anyway, and they were better than expected. I’ve also made games I thought everyone would go crazy over, but at the end nobody cared about. I don’t think a prototype is enough to tell if you should ditch it or not, especially if that’s based only on your decision and not random people’s feedback.

Personally, I develop games for fun, so if I’m working on a project that suddenly I stop enjoying, I either change the game to make it more fun to work for, or wrap everything up and publish it as-is to start a new one (if it has enough content).

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Impersonal Sky God4 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. Personally, abit of both - I'm enjoying doing it as a hobby but moving it towards either being a secondary source of income/maybe oneday a full time job would awesome.

As happens, I don't think either idea is going to be the indie hit of the world or anything, but there are genres of games that I enjoy. As happens, there's been little feedback on the forums at all, but the discord has been positive in there feedback of the individual pieces of work I shared.

Thanks again.

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