Game Development is Iteration - Pivot, Pivot and Pivot Again

Game Development is Iteration

You can’t just lay out a plan and follow it to the end—at least not if you’re making something even remotely new. What seems great on paper often falls apart in practice. Player feedback, unexpected interactions, and key details can push the entire project in surprising directions.

This constant need to adapt is a core part of the process. It’s even more pronounced in solo development, where balancing multiple roles means constant trade-offs and reassessments.

Echoes of Myth has gone through several major pivots. The original vision was an ambitious mix of Diablo-style ARPG mechanics, Soulslike combat, Metroidvania world design, and a narrative-driven single-player RPG. That scope quickly proved unmanageable.

The first big change was dropping the narrative-driven RPG angle in favor of a Diablo-style rift system with a few handcrafted levels. That still wasn’t quite right—some bespoke content was clearly necessary. After experimenting with larger handcrafted levels, I moved toward smaller, randomized layouts with procedural enemy and reward placement. This aligned well with the roguelite formula, leading to the biggest shift: fully committing to roguelite structure and abandoning the Metroidvania-style world design.

Once the core roguelite gameplay was in place—dynamic maps with procedural levels structured around small, Hades-style rooms—there was still a lingering clash with the original Diablo-style itemization. I realized that to make the game feel cohesive, I had to fully embrace roguelite mechanics, shifting away from dynamic item generation and focusing on unique items as key power boosts, alongside talents and meta-progression.

As the mechanics evolved, so did the game’s world. I worked on lore, narrative, and characters in a way that fully supported the gameplay, rather than existing as a separate layer. Marketability also became a factor, leading to the refined core theme: a broken world where gods have fallen silent. Through further iteration, this developed into a system where a few select gods and their divine domains shape the game’s power progression, giving players meaningful choices and synergy-driven builds.

Each pivot has reshaped Echoes of Myth into what it is now. The defining genre has shifted to roguelite, while the balance between ARPG and Soulslike influences has been an ongoing back-and-forth. The guiding principle throughout hasn’t been sticking to a fixed vision, but rather finding the sweet spot between what’s fun to play, what looks right to my eye, and what’s actually feasible to complete as a solo developer.

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