Not a Postmortem but a "Mid-mortem" for my WIP indie game dev journey

Firstly, this post will definitely not be as useful or informative as those like “My game made $XXk”, which I admire and aim for. That said, my journey hasn't been proven successful yet, so this might not be as convincing.

FYI, I quit my job 6 months ago and have been working on my first indie game. I just want to write down my journey before I release my game so that I actually have a record to look back on for the later “successful” retrospective like others have done.

The Project: Hell Forge

Just to give you context on what I'm building Hell Forge, a retro pixel-art roguelite (inspired by Vampire Survivors but with a high-stakes weapon crafting system). It's currently in the final sprint before our public demo.

My Routine

The daily routine actually starts the night before. I always write down my TODOs for the next day. Personally, I consider it important to limit the number of tasks to under 5~6, and also sort them by priority.

After a good 8 hours of sleep, I wake up at 6:30 and immediately start working on the first TODO I wrote last night. I keep working till 10:30 and then go to the gym for 1.5 hours, by which time I should have finished at least the most important task, if not more. (I exercise no less than 5 times a week, which really helps me refresh and not burn myself out).

The rest of the day is nothing special—just working on the remaining tasks. Before I go to bed, I always try very hard not to skip the “Summary & Planning” part. (I do skip this part once a week or two, trying not to push myself too hard lol).

Lessons Learned

Since I am new to indie game dev, I feel like I have gone through a lot of trial and error regarding what really matters to increase the odds of success. So far, I have reached the following two conclusions:

• Have a deadline for release. At the beginning, I only had a very opaque deadline, but since setting a hard date, it helped me clarify what is lacking in my game and what should be prioritized. (Warning: the deadline actually puts a lot of pressure on me, though).
• Learn marketing. I am still learning and experimenting with marketing, trying out the advice I read from other post-launch breakdown posts. (This can be controversial, but I personally decided not to have a publisher this time since I want to actually learn marketing myself, and I feel like I should be the one who knows my game’s unique selling point best).

Thanks for reading this development log. I hope I can soon link this back in my future “how I succeeded in my first indie game” write-up. If you have any advice or feedback, I'd love to hear it!