Reducing Your Game's Scale: Save It For The Sequel!

It seemingly happens to almost every designer, novice or veteran, AAA and indie. You have that grand game idea. When you close your eyes, you can see it being played before you. The expansive levels, the fancy weapons, the beautiful graphics and audio, all of the little polished details. Then you snap back to reality and (hopefully) quickly realize the scale of your dream game is simply too large.

Time to start cutting!

This may seem terrible and disappointing, but just because you're cutting features and making compromises doesn't mean the initial vision is completely lost. Firstly, you're helping to ensure that you actually get to release your game. This is the ultimate goal, and everything should be done to ensure this (oh, but do make sure you provide a great experience!). Take the ideas you're cutting, write them down somewhere, as they are not lost forever.

Save them for the sequel!

Obviously, Overtime had a much grander scale when I first started designing compared to what it's been boiled down to now. Even after I write this, I'm sure more things will be cut. Being a solo developer working on his first actual commercial release, the scale needs to be small to ensure I actually release something. However, everything that I am cutting I do want to see come to fruition, so it's being saved for a sequel game, which I hope I get to work on given that the first title is received well enough to warrant it. 

So don't fret, don't fear! Cut, cut cut. You'll see an amazing thing happen, something that you probably couldn't imagine be happening. Your game becomes better for it, and you actually increase your chances of releasing. Not a bad trade off at all.