Solo Game Dev: Juggling a Hundred Hats and a Thousand Tasks

When it comes to software development, there’s so much more than meets the eye. The amount of detail and work involved can be mind-boggling, even for seemingly simple games and systems. I thought it might be interesting to document what kinds of development and related activities there are—and what a solo developer like me has to juggle.

All of this is highly iterative, as outlined in another blog post Game Development is Iteration - Pivot, Pivot and Pivot Again. Work on individual parts is constantly followed by evaluating the big picture—assessing whether major pivots or hard decisions are necessary, which in turn can cause cascading changes. This also answers a common question: "Why use licensed assets instead of doing everything yourself if you're solo developing?" Because even when leveraging external assets, the workload remains enormous.

This list is also one of my key personal motivations. When most hobbyists think of game development they often think only of visuals, game design, programming and similar key areas while there is so much more to it when it comes to developing and actually releasing a commercial game.

Development

  • Game design – Naturally a core focus. It branches into several sub-areas like combat design, core mechanics, narrative design, systems design, and refining the driving vision along the way.
  • Story and dialogue writing – Bringing the world, NPCs, and game narrative to life.
  • Project management & production – I started using Notion as my project management tool less than a year ago, and I’m currently tracking 600+ open tasks, with 1,100+ completed and 100+ rejected. This means constant prioritization, jumping between tasks, assessing progress toward key milestones, evaluating potential pivots or downscoping decisions, and balancing development, testing, community outreach, and marketing efforts.
  • Programming – A broad category depending on scope. This includes actual game systems, Unity tooling support, external tools, and non-game content like websites. Echoes of Myth features a large number of interwoven systems that frequently require refinement when unexpected interactions emerge. (A dedicated post on these systems is coming.)
  • Content development in Unity – Creating rooms, levels, enemies, attacks, classes, talents, buffs, divine treasures, trials, vendors, stats, weapons, spells, effects, and defining the diverse roguelike/lite mechanics - full list is too long to include here.
  • AI development – Designing and configuring enemy AI models.
  • UI development – Everything from HUD elements to in-game menus.
  • Licensed content prep & selection – Sifting through vast libraries of music, SFX, 3D models, animations, icons, UI art, etc., to find assets that fit. This is a surprisingly non-trivial task, especially when ensuring stylistic consistency.
  • Audio editing – Existing assets often need tweaking, whether through mixing, timing adjustments, or other modifications.
  • Constant testing – Regression testing, playthroughs, and new feature testing.
  • Troubleshooting & bugfixing – There’s always a backlog, but critical blockers must be handled immediately. Some bugs take an unexpected amount of time due to their complexity.
  • Performance & tuning – Optimizing everything to ensure smooth gameplay.
  • Localization & accessibility – Adapting the game for different languages and ensuring key accessibility features.
  • Steam integration – Achievements, cloud saves, and platform-specific features.
  • Final polish – Ensuring everything reaches a sufficiently high level of quality.

Other Activities (Beyond Development)

  • Marketing – Writing this blog, setting up and maintaining Steam pages, managing the game’s website, event participation, gathering feedback, maintaining an email list, influencer outreach, creating trailers, and more.
  • Community management – Running the Discord server, managing the Steam community, player outreach on forums, and recruiting testers.
  • Testing facilitation – Organizing beta tests, gathering feedback, and iterating based on input.
  • Company operations – Handling legal, financial, and administrative aspects of running a game development business.
  • Networking & industry relations – Attending events, meeting other devs, forming partnerships.
  • Post-launch support & updates – Customer support, issue tracking, bug fixes, and ongoing updates—all while likely shifting focus to the next project.

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