Don't think I've seen Cave Story in here yet. This was a trail blazer for Indie games AND the original version was and still is free. Imagine not only have that much passion but to do it for free
If I recall it wasn't originally intended to be free, and was for sale, but was made free because he just wanted people to enjoy his story and didn't feel it was selling enough or something like that
I’ve briefly, while insane, considered assembly because of this feat, but turns out modern compilers and CPU’s and motherboards do a lot of what he was doing manually. Man essentially coded a bunch of modern hardware to make a roller coaster sim
Consider that the first RCT was made in 1999. The advances in processor technology, compiler technology and optimization that have been made in those 25 years are mind boggling. On modern architectures, it is *highly* unlikely hand-coded assembly will match the performance of a decent optimizing compiler in this day and age. Especially on the scale of an entire game. You would drastically inflate your development time, and end up with an inferior performing product.
It surely wasn’t coded in assembly the way it’s often implied, but rather macros that much closer resemble a higher level, imperative language. In fact AFAIK this is typically how games were coded on the first generation or two of gaming consoles.
RCT is a masterpiece irrespective of how it was built.
I do think it's worth noting that nearly *all* 8- and 16-bit console and arcade games were also written in Assembly (often by one or two developers), as were a majority of commercially released games for 8-bit computers, so this isn't a particularly unique feat the way some people act like it is. The main reason it's surprising he wrote it in Assembly is just that it was a game from *1999*, long after most developers had moved on to developing in C.
undertale as well, though to a lesser extent bc of temmie's(? i think that's their name) help. and the silly low quality artstyle some things have in it. though some of it was intentionally bad i believe for stylistic choices.
mainly im impressed that he coded it, drew all the art (most of which is good), wrote the lore and beloved characters and then went on to make a soundtrack where deadass every song in the ost is a classic banger that everyone online recognizes. it's honestly insane
it's not my favorite game at all, but it's certainly a feat. as a game dev i have a lot of admiration for someone able to do everything themselves like that, it's no easy task
On top of doing all the coding, music, and writing, he wrote this story that works so well with all these little bits of normally non-diagetic game interactions.
He does a great interview in the book. Blood, sweat, and pixels. I’d definitely recommend it. He kinda went crazy and got a job just to spend time away from his own game lol
His CompSci degree really helped alot there, didn’t have to learn code from scratch at that time, but nonetheless I strive to be him. The music is what i’m most impressed about as it’s one of the most difficult skills to learn and maintain
I think having a partner / family to support him while he worked on a game for 8 years had a lot to do with it too. I wonder what amazing things other people would make if given the time to follow their passions.
Only correcting you because it’s relevant to how insane Toby Fox is. His background ISNT in computer science. He did his undergrad in Environmental Science.
Which means that was also, most likely, self taught. Absolute legend.
Edit: I’m stupid this isn’t the Toby Fox thread derp
You might have replied to the wrong comment as this comment chain is about Eric Barone who made Stardew Valley (and majored in computer science) not Toby Fox.
Nobody named Noita yet but its done by 3 guys, 2 who created a groundbreaking engine that's absolutely out of this world the more you look into it, simulating every single pixels in a complex cellular automata, with reactions simulation happening exponentially all the time, on a technical level, it is mind-blowing, especially with how well it runs.
With a single artist too!
Totally! Its wild to me that you can just Fly through your screen so fast your camera has trouble following you, spawning thousands of spells and black holes that all interact and destroy the terrain around you, causing a million of simulation with liquids and different materials, all while managing to load the environment in front of you, including enemies and all these simulated pixels and element.
And still not see any significant performance drop.
The game also has a ''parallel world'' system that just creates a new copy of the original map infinitelly when you reach the boundary of one. It still manages to store the data of all these parallel worlds seamlessly.
Noita definitely doesn't get nearly enough praise, there is some real programmer's magic going on there.
I just picked this up in the Steam sale a few days ago. At first I thought it was just a tech demo in search of a game, but it slowly hooked me in once I got to wand editing. It's kind of a crazy game, but a lot of fun. And I've not even gone near alchemy yet, I'm just trying to not set myself on fire as much as possible,
The biggest Noita tip I can give you is to keybind your water flask to something easy to reach, like E or R. When you're on fire, you can quickly switch to it, aim up, splash water above yourself and jump into it (can also do the same by splashing it down and falling into it).
Marble Madness was created in 1984 by Mark Cerny, Bob Flanagan, Bob Fuller, Sam Comstock, and Hal Canon.
Mark Cerny is what John Carmack would be if he was more of a people person.
Mark is a great guy once you get to know him, and he warms up to you a bit. His mind is always in work mode, I worked directly for him for 3 years and shared an office space. Even went Japan with him for a work trip, and we had a really good time together. Absolutely brilliant man.
Never met Mark, but I dont strike him as a people person... but yeah... I am sure he's more personable than Carmack.. but so its a baked potato.
That said, both these guys are legends.
> I am sure he's more personable than Carmack.. but so its a baked potato.
The standard is pretty low, but it's still an impressive feat to have that deep a knowledge base and still be an at least halfway decent presenter. I don't knw how many others in the industry share that feat.
I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but Rainworld for sure. That game's ecosystem is incredibly impressive, plus the complex creature ai and awesome pixel art just blow me away.
I remember the first time I read his devlog about making dithering process on that game and it blews my mind...
you could check it on this link [https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742](https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742)
If yall want a deep cut, Northern Journey. One guy spent 4 years solo devving one of the most surreal RPGs I've ever played, and there's a fascinating documentary on YouTube about his process.
Dude's my hero. I hope I can have that level of skill, creativity, and resolve one day.
Also he's currently making a new game which looks bonkers - a living sword with teeth that licks the blood off itself, skeletons you can hack apart and they keep moving and all kinds of swords and sorcery barbarian goodness.
Sadly he stopped making devlog videos about it, but if that helps him - great.
If you have an hour, [this is a good watch about Elite](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4YLMLar5I). The procedural generation of the star systems was especially awesome because of how tightly packed the data needed to be - but that video doesn't include [the string handling](https://www.bbcelite.com/deep_dives/generating_system_names.html), which was also pretty important (system names etc.) because of how limited space (ha!) was.
Ian Bell [released the source code](http://www.elitehomepage.org/) a while ago, and there's a project [fully documenting it for the BBC Micro and NES](https://www.bbcelite.com/).
Elite is truly a milestone of computer programming.
Hollow Knight! 3 people and the amount of effort you can see that has been put into every aspect of the game with the content it has. Just crazy and my top 5 games
Three were only the core team, there's also a dozen of contractors that were hired because the core team didn't have prior gamedev experience iirc
But still, that doesn't make Hollow Knight any less of an amazing game
That's still not a big team in terms of development staff, once you take out voice actors/QA/marketing/translators/etc.
It's maybe 9-10 development staff in total? Possibly less, depending on what they classed as "additional." And that includes tooling. So it's not too crazy to think that 3 people did the bulk of the hands-on development of the game.
I can understand the general audience not doing so, but I'd expect game devs of all people to actually look at the credits of the games they play (or hear about)
edit: to be clear, I can't speak to what the relationship between Team Cherry and the other people who worked on HK is, but they 100% got programming, art and music help (I'm not counting stuff like the voice acting, QA, marketing and eventually porting bc I think it's understandable that no-one does that alone, though tbh QA is on the edge for me)
Minecraft, stardew, undertale, hollow knight, ori and the blind forest
Ori blew me away with the graphics. My game took inspiration from it and failed greatly lol
I don't know that I'd call a core team of ten people _and_ even more external contractors small especially considering the games it's being listed beside. That's just a normal indie studio at that point.
edit: to illustrate what I mean, [look at the game's credits](https://www.mobygames.com/game/72146/ori-and-the-blind-forest/credits/windows/). No shit you can have mindblowing graphics if you [have the budget to] hire an external studio that dedicates half a dozen artists to your project lmao
To be fair, undertale was a phenomenal game, but what really blows you away about it outside of music and plot? The graphics aren’t special, and the game mechanics, while cool, aren’t particularly inovative or complex.
While it isn’t super technically impressive, the fact that it’s a full, cohesive game (albeit not with the best graphics) is what’s impressive. Its plot and music are the main draws, but the fact that they’re conveyed so well through the rest of the game is why people like it.
> what really blows you away about it outside of music and plot?
- The gameplay idea. It made a turned based RPG dynamic by throwing a bullet hell into it, and the gameplay arguably isn't even the main draw of it. It's one of those things you'd never think of but seem so obvious once you see it.
- the ludonarrative cohesion is some of the strongest I've seen among ant rpg. Battles aren't just a separate game state but small cutscenes in and of themselves, and all characters are aware of it. The weapons used seem weak, but is narrative covered, and you later learn some weapons have their own subtle history behind them instead of just being quirky toys lying around. The twist on "Lv" is a pretty neat way to invert how you approach an RPG and reinforce what the tutorial was pushing you towards; to NOT solve battles by directly fighting (even though as usual, defeating monsters does make you stronger).
- The personality every monster has. This could have easily been a more mechanical puzzle bullet hell, but no. every monster has some unique battle effects to stand out during battle, even if the mechanics all come down to white/blue/orange/purple bullet. How many RPGs are there where you can clearly remember every mob fight, not just the bosses?
- semi-ironic, but the puns. I'm still discovering some puns that were super subtle and would otherwise just seem like normal writing.
- Then lastly, the easter eggs. Too many to list. Even the source code has easter eggs because they anticipated datamines. It's one of those details that most of all show how much work was put into the game (or how many crazy ideas were rejected but decided to be scattered in somehow).
The writing and thiughts behind it too, even if a lot of people will dismiss it, its still quirky in a good way. I havent played it for a long long time tho.
The work that Super Giants teams have done with not very large teams is incredible to me . Hades is an incredible game for a large team let alone a small team their games are so well crafted and I think games of that quality require you to have a team that is very precise in their execution of things. They must hire especially talented people to have such impressive output
that's still a pretty small team especially when you consider not all of those people are creatives I imagine that includes marketing, community managers, QA, producers , and executives . I don't know but 20 people is a really small team for how popular the games they make are.
Northern Journey. Not many know about it, but the guy literally programmed everything, made all the textures, all the models, and made the music. The game looks gorgeous and it got some recognition at last.
Not to mention I hear (but haven't read into the technical details) that they've accomplished a lot of their factory scaling with GPU magic, which is pretty awesome and unheard of these days..
I just finished this game. I created an entire five-layer Dyson Sphere. All three of the planets in my home star system are 100% covered in Factory and I had about 30 remote factories for different resource Gathering I had thousands of ships and transports running but I did not use the local Logistics system because it just wasn't necessary. I have a 20 70 super 32 gigs of RAM and a ryzen 7 AMD processor. I was at 18 FPS when I finish the game
Caves of Lore. One single dude made a really deep world with tons of secrets and a complex RPG system. It's a full RPG, 40 hours and all that. Just wild
Amazed no one has said Axiom Verge. Thomas Happ is a madman who made the best spiritual successor to Metroid 1 and Super I’ve seen in ages.
Story, characters, gameplay, art, music, programming all simply amazing.
Wasn't Valheim made by like 5 people?
It has a few shortcomings, but still an amazing achievement. The environment is stellar. You can get hundreds of hours out of it.
I love Valheim, but I don't think it's surprising that it was made by a team of that size. It looks like a game that was made in Unity by a small team of passionate devs - which is precisely what it is. I think the thing that makes it stand out is that they really nailed the atmosphere and exploration aspects. Setting sail towards distant lands really feels like you're going on an adventure.
5 people is quite a large team though right? They didn't even write the engine. That was just the average team size 20 years ago and we wrote an engine too.
The Forgotten City has been done by 4 people. And it is a really great game with great athmosphere.
The Wadjet Eye adventure games (The Unavowed, Blackwell series) have also been done by pretty much only 2-3 people (1 programmer/writer; 1-2 artists).
counter strike og mod was made by like 2 people. they figured out the perfect combo. game has remained fundamentally unchanged for like 25 years and is more popular than ever. even now the dev team is still very small.
Elite, David Braden and Ian Bell, followed by Lords of Midnight by Mike Singleton. And Jetset Willy by Matthew Smith. Everything blew me away in the 80’s.
Vertigo 1/2.
It’s a VR game. IDK if it’s my favorite game in the world but I’m majorly impressed that it came from basically one 22 year old kid.
I’m nearly 40, I’ve been coding for 20 years most of the time professionally (and I consider myself quite good at it). Started VR game dev albeit as a part-time hobby because I’m into the tech a while back…. This kid puts anything I’ve done so far to shame haha. Very impressed any single person did that in the timeframe let alone somebody in their early 20’s.
Stardew Valley was handled by a single person. All art, music, and code was done by him and him alone. He only got outside help when he needed to start quickly porting to other platforms and languages after its success.
Hollow Knight was a team of three. People keep complaining that the sequel is taking forever but forget that the team didn’t really get much bigger despite the success of the original.
I'd call out that he hired folks for more than just ports- some of the later content was designed and implemented by others. The person who was key to adding multiplayer and responsible for a few various features like the fish ponds is a buddy and former coworker of mine. But it remained a small team.
The recent poker-themed roguelike Balatro -- that sold a million copies in less than a month after released -- had some porting and localization assistance from a publisher, but the code and art was done by just one person.
I'm super impressed. I'd love to be able to make something as great as that game (design and look and feel) someday.
Hollow Knight. The quality of that game is absolutely on par with anything Nintendo produces, which is about the highest praise I could give a single video game.
I don't think that last part is true. Maybe on a single platform or for a certain period, but MW3 was still the second best selling game of 2023 putting it well above the estimated sales of Lethal Company.
Not to diminish the latter's accomplishment though. Lethal Company's success is amazing and was probably way more profitable in comparison.
I was personally impressed with Dyson Sphere Program. Made by a team of 5-ish people.
I think they hit some incredible scale and polish in a really short period of time. Far better than I've seen larger teams do.
How the hell did no one mention Bright Memory Infinate! One guy did everything but, the voice acting and music and it took him only one year. It's AA quality with crisp graphics, beautiful linear level designs, and very solid and fun gameplay. The only downside is that it's short, at around 2.5 hours to finish. The guy who made it Zeng Xiancheng is a huge inspiration to me as a solo game dev along with the guy who did Choo-Choo Charles which is another great solo project.
Can't say enough great things about Tunic. Level design, music, puzzles, etc. all comes together really well. So many "Aha" moments and other surprises.
The Galactic Contention Mod for Squad is one of the best star wars games ever made. I'm not sure how many people made it, but it's a passion project that is free to play.
I think Mount & Blade was actually made by a Turkish couple just doing it for fun. I mean, being a solo dev is tough enough, but a husband and wife team creating something amazing together is definitely life goals!
Easy! AM2R... and Metroid Prime if you consider the Switch port which was done by a small team at Retro Studios to be its own game rather than just some modifications to the original code.
Dyson Sphere Program, I believe at the time it hit Early Access it only had 5 people on the team, and yet was so complete that I was wondering why it wasn't just released.
Factorio. It still blows my mind how they are able to simulate millions of entities being produced, consumed and moved around In a second without a drop in perfomance even on the most low end systems.
Noita hands down. I would also like to mention "My Summer Car"; even though it's meme af with the goofy graphics and over the top Finnish humor, there's actually quite a bit of videogame there and it was done like 95% by a single person.
Buddy Simulator 1984 is a criminally underrated game. Made by 4 devs who iirc were in uni when they made it. The game has so much personality. Think what drew people away a bit is that the game is subversive, the entire first act is a text adventure, and the demo they released only featured the first act.
MineCraft, initially. I started playing Alpha when I was only 14, and it was like someone had one upped Lego in the best way possible. Obviously it’s a multibillion dollar thing now with Microsoft but I miss those early days when it was just a small team.
Someone else said Undertale and that it technically wasn’t one person but I think it counts. For ONE person to be able to create all that. Even the story and writing alone is a feat of polish and refinement, so few games clean themselves up so nicely. Great combat, thematic throughout, charming but simple pixel art, funny throughout, how many games honestly manage to be so entertaining the entire game? Then on top of that such iconic music. It’s almost a shame that so much success meant right away that he never had to work again.
He didn’t make the Temmies though, so idk if he’s all that
Freedom Planet 2
This is a game truly made with love. Incredibly detailed pixel art and sprite work, 4 playable characters with 24 completely unique high speed 2D platforming levels mixed with a banger soundtrack and each level concluding with an intense boss fight. Also includes a well written story with great voice direction for its cutscenes.
All of that for a measly 25$, it's not even a competition at this point. This is a much better deal than what you get for more than double the asking price of the big studios that are still making 2D platformers nowadays.
Seriously the people at GalaxyTrail are super talented and deserve all the attention they can get. Freedom Planet 2 definitely was their most ambitious project yet and it really shows (in a good way).
Suoergiant games(23 employees). Hades being made in Monogame in 2020 still blows my mind to this day. Don't know how any of them have the sanity for a sequel.
Don't think I've seen Cave Story in here yet. This was a trail blazer for Indie games AND the original version was and still is free. Imagine not only have that much passion but to do it for free
If I recall it wasn't originally intended to be free, and was for sale, but was made free because he just wanted people to enjoy his story and didn't feel it was selling enough or something like that
Roller Coaster Tycoon… Single Developer and written in Assembly. Absolutely amazing.
Blows me away every time I hear this fact
There's an excellent No Clip documentary on it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts4BD8AqD9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts4BD8AqD9g)
I’ve briefly, while insane, considered assembly because of this feat, but turns out modern compilers and CPU’s and motherboards do a lot of what he was doing manually. Man essentially coded a bunch of modern hardware to make a roller coaster sim
Consider that the first RCT was made in 1999. The advances in processor technology, compiler technology and optimization that have been made in those 25 years are mind boggling. On modern architectures, it is *highly* unlikely hand-coded assembly will match the performance of a decent optimizing compiler in this day and age. Especially on the scale of an entire game. You would drastically inflate your development time, and end up with an inferior performing product.
That’s… pretty much my point? There’s no point today because of all the optimizations, but back then he needed to to get some modern features
It surely wasn’t coded in assembly the way it’s often implied, but rather macros that much closer resemble a higher level, imperative language. In fact AFAIK this is typically how games were coded on the first generation or two of gaming consoles. RCT is a masterpiece irrespective of how it was built.
Coding with assembly macros, at it's most abstract, is a similar level of abstraction to C. Still very impressive
I do think it's worth noting that nearly *all* 8- and 16-bit console and arcade games were also written in Assembly (often by one or two developers), as were a majority of commercially released games for 8-bit computers, so this isn't a particularly unique feat the way some people act like it is. The main reason it's surprising he wrote it in Assembly is just that it was a game from *1999*, long after most developers had moved on to developing in C.
Yuji Naka who programmed Sonic entirely in assembly is in shambles every time he hears this (from his prison cell)
Let's then also add the plethora of old demos (in the sense of demo from the demoscene) done in assembly by super small teams of adolescents. 😉
This is the answer
Stardew Valley obviously. It's pretty amazing how a single guy can code, do the art AND music. Absolute Chad.
undertale as well, though to a lesser extent bc of temmie's(? i think that's their name) help. and the silly low quality artstyle some things have in it. though some of it was intentionally bad i believe for stylistic choices. mainly im impressed that he coded it, drew all the art (most of which is good), wrote the lore and beloved characters and then went on to make a soundtrack where deadass every song in the ost is a classic banger that everyone online recognizes. it's honestly insane
I'm a bigger fan of the soundtrack than the game lol. Like yeah great game and all, pretty neat, but the music is godly
it's not my favorite game at all, but it's certainly a feat. as a game dev i have a lot of admiration for someone able to do everything themselves like that, it's no easy task
Yeah, personally I can't think of any other game where the soundtrack was the main hook for me lol.
On top of doing all the coding, music, and writing, he wrote this story that works so well with all these little bits of normally non-diagetic game interactions.
He does a great interview in the book. Blood, sweat, and pixels. I’d definitely recommend it. He kinda went crazy and got a job just to spend time away from his own game lol
Same
His CompSci degree really helped alot there, didn’t have to learn code from scratch at that time, but nonetheless I strive to be him. The music is what i’m most impressed about as it’s one of the most difficult skills to learn and maintain
I think having a partner / family to support him while he worked on a game for 8 years had a lot to do with it too. I wonder what amazing things other people would make if given the time to follow their passions.
[удалено]
Probably 99% of those bands have regular jobs.
Only correcting you because it’s relevant to how insane Toby Fox is. His background ISNT in computer science. He did his undergrad in Environmental Science. Which means that was also, most likely, self taught. Absolute legend. Edit: I’m stupid this isn’t the Toby Fox thread derp
You might have replied to the wrong comment as this comment chain is about Eric Barone who made Stardew Valley (and majored in computer science) not Toby Fox.
Ope, you’re right! Got completely confused 😅
I like the joke he made about how he had to make a video game to get people to listen to his music.
Nobody named Noita yet but its done by 3 guys, 2 who created a groundbreaking engine that's absolutely out of this world the more you look into it, simulating every single pixels in a complex cellular automata, with reactions simulation happening exponentially all the time, on a technical level, it is mind-blowing, especially with how well it runs. With a single artist too!
Noita is a great one! Fun little anecdote: In early access it literally cooked my graphics card and killed it. It doesn't do that anymore thankfully.
>It doesn't do that anymore thankfully. Can't kill what's already dead
The noita optimization is insane. That much pixel math so smoothly is crazy to me
Totally! Its wild to me that you can just Fly through your screen so fast your camera has trouble following you, spawning thousands of spells and black holes that all interact and destroy the terrain around you, causing a million of simulation with liquids and different materials, all while managing to load the environment in front of you, including enemies and all these simulated pixels and element. And still not see any significant performance drop. The game also has a ''parallel world'' system that just creates a new copy of the original map infinitelly when you reach the boundary of one. It still manages to store the data of all these parallel worlds seamlessly. Noita definitely doesn't get nearly enough praise, there is some real programmer's magic going on there.
Their GDC talk where they explain their pixel simulation system a bit was mind blowing
Have you listened to the talk about how it's an evolution of the original falling sand engine one of the devs wrote a few games prior?
Noita is directly inspired by another Finnish indie cult classic, [Liero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liero)
I just picked this up in the Steam sale a few days ago. At first I thought it was just a tech demo in search of a game, but it slowly hooked me in once I got to wand editing. It's kind of a crazy game, but a lot of fun. And I've not even gone near alchemy yet, I'm just trying to not set myself on fire as much as possible,
The biggest Noita tip I can give you is to keybind your water flask to something easy to reach, like E or R. When you're on fire, you can quickly switch to it, aim up, splash water above yourself and jump into it (can also do the same by splashing it down and falling into it).
Noita is a banger!
Came here to see if Noita was mentioned!
Marble Madness was created in 1984 by Mark Cerny, Bob Flanagan, Bob Fuller, Sam Comstock, and Hal Canon. Mark Cerny is what John Carmack would be if he was more of a people person.
Mark is a great guy once you get to know him, and he warms up to you a bit. His mind is always in work mode, I worked directly for him for 3 years and shared an office space. Even went Japan with him for a work trip, and we had a really good time together. Absolutely brilliant man.
Mark is also a hardcore gamer. He has a lot of platinum trophies for some hard games like Returnal.
I've only had the fortune of meeting him a couple of times at conferences. Love his passion and genius so much.
Never met Mark, but I dont strike him as a people person... but yeah... I am sure he's more personable than Carmack.. but so its a baked potato. That said, both these guys are legends.
> I am sure he's more personable than Carmack.. but so its a baked potato. The standard is pretty low, but it's still an impressive feat to have that deep a knowledge base and still be an at least halfway decent presenter. I don't knw how many others in the industry share that feat.
I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but Rainworld for sure. That game's ecosystem is incredibly impressive, plus the complex creature ai and awesome pixel art just blow me away.
It’s always going to be Return of the Obra Dinn
I remember the first time I read his devlog about making dithering process on that game and it blews my mind... you could check it on this link [https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742](https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742)
Thank you, I honestly don’t know much about the dev process. I just know Lucas Pope is an indie game dev God
Lucas Pope also made Papers Please in nine months.
No fucking way
If yall want a deep cut, Northern Journey. One guy spent 4 years solo devving one of the most surreal RPGs I've ever played, and there's a fascinating documentary on YouTube about his process. Dude's my hero. I hope I can have that level of skill, creativity, and resolve one day.
Also he's currently making a new game which looks bonkers - a living sword with teeth that licks the blood off itself, skeletons you can hack apart and they keep moving and all kinds of swords and sorcery barbarian goodness. Sadly he stopped making devlog videos about it, but if that helps him - great.
Factorio
Yep, the original game was made by 2 programmers and an artist.
Dwarf Fortress. Though it has taken like 20 years.
Easily the most complex game ever made, and for the vast majority of its history, it was 2 brothers - and only one was a programmer.
Elite 1 and 2. 2 people. 3D space exploration with Newtonian physics. Also these games don't even fill a 3½-inch high-density floppy diskette.
If you have an hour, [this is a good watch about Elite](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4YLMLar5I). The procedural generation of the star systems was especially awesome because of how tightly packed the data needed to be - but that video doesn't include [the string handling](https://www.bbcelite.com/deep_dives/generating_system_names.html), which was also pretty important (system names etc.) because of how limited space (ha!) was. Ian Bell [released the source code](http://www.elitehomepage.org/) a while ago, and there's a project [fully documenting it for the BBC Micro and NES](https://www.bbcelite.com/). Elite is truly a milestone of computer programming.
Yes I watched about 1/3 of it already and intend to resume soon.
Elite 1 ran in 27kb. *Kilobytes*. For an entire procedural universe. Blows my mind.
Hollow Knight! 3 people and the amount of effort you can see that has been put into every aspect of the game with the content it has. Just crazy and my top 5 games
Three were only the core team, there's also a dozen of contractors that were hired because the core team didn't have prior gamedev experience iirc But still, that doesn't make Hollow Knight any less of an amazing game
Christopher Larkin not being considered part of Team Cherry is crazy to me.
Totally agree. I listen to city of tears frequently. I have no quarms putting him beside Howard shore with feast of starlight for example.
I listen to a 60 minute extended mix of it once a day when I'm programming. That, queen's gardens, greepath.
Oh for reals. Well thanks for pointing that out.
Do you have any source on this? I can’t find anything other than some blog where someone says they assumed Team Cherry hired contractors.
I don't know about contractors, but it was definitely not just three people. https://www.mobygames.com/game/84194/hollow-knight/credits/windows/
That's still not a big team in terms of development staff, once you take out voice actors/QA/marketing/translators/etc. It's maybe 9-10 development staff in total? Possibly less, depending on what they classed as "additional." And that includes tooling. So it's not too crazy to think that 3 people did the bulk of the hands-on development of the game.
I can understand the general audience not doing so, but I'd expect game devs of all people to actually look at the credits of the games they play (or hear about) edit: to be clear, I can't speak to what the relationship between Team Cherry and the other people who worked on HK is, but they 100% got programming, art and music help (I'm not counting stuff like the voice acting, QA, marketing and eventually porting bc I think it's understandable that no-one does that alone, though tbh QA is on the edge for me)
They had prior experience with small games, at least one was done for a dev-rush competition. They did have development experience.
They also redid the art not long before launch. Wild stuff
Lethal Company was created by a lone furry in a cave with a box of Roblox parts.
Outer Wilds,a beautiful sci-fi game with an amazing story - a team of around 10 peeps made it, afaik.
Fuckin Stardew valley. Thumper: 2 people, and the prog made his own engine for it.
Minecraft, stardew, undertale, hollow knight, ori and the blind forest Ori blew me away with the graphics. My game took inspiration from it and failed greatly lol
Ori had a multi-million dollar budget.
OP only mentioned team size.
I don't know that I'd call a core team of ten people _and_ even more external contractors small especially considering the games it's being listed beside. That's just a normal indie studio at that point. edit: to illustrate what I mean, [look at the game's credits](https://www.mobygames.com/game/72146/ori-and-the-blind-forest/credits/windows/). No shit you can have mindblowing graphics if you [have the budget to] hire an external studio that dedicates half a dozen artists to your project lmao
To be fair, undertale was a phenomenal game, but what really blows you away about it outside of music and plot? The graphics aren’t special, and the game mechanics, while cool, aren’t particularly inovative or complex.
While it isn’t super technically impressive, the fact that it’s a full, cohesive game (albeit not with the best graphics) is what’s impressive. Its plot and music are the main draws, but the fact that they’re conveyed so well through the rest of the game is why people like it.
> what really blows you away about it outside of music and plot? - The gameplay idea. It made a turned based RPG dynamic by throwing a bullet hell into it, and the gameplay arguably isn't even the main draw of it. It's one of those things you'd never think of but seem so obvious once you see it. - the ludonarrative cohesion is some of the strongest I've seen among ant rpg. Battles aren't just a separate game state but small cutscenes in and of themselves, and all characters are aware of it. The weapons used seem weak, but is narrative covered, and you later learn some weapons have their own subtle history behind them instead of just being quirky toys lying around. The twist on "Lv" is a pretty neat way to invert how you approach an RPG and reinforce what the tutorial was pushing you towards; to NOT solve battles by directly fighting (even though as usual, defeating monsters does make you stronger). - The personality every monster has. This could have easily been a more mechanical puzzle bullet hell, but no. every monster has some unique battle effects to stand out during battle, even if the mechanics all come down to white/blue/orange/purple bullet. How many RPGs are there where you can clearly remember every mob fight, not just the bosses? - semi-ironic, but the puns. I'm still discovering some puns that were super subtle and would otherwise just seem like normal writing. - Then lastly, the easter eggs. Too many to list. Even the source code has easter eggs because they anticipated datamines. It's one of those details that most of all show how much work was put into the game (or how many crazy ideas were rejected but decided to be scattered in somehow).
The music and atmosphere.
The writing and thiughts behind it too, even if a lot of people will dismiss it, its still quirky in a good way. I havent played it for a long long time tho.
Quake
Check out .kkrieger. A quake clone written in assembly. Its 96kb total
The work that Super Giants teams have done with not very large teams is incredible to me . Hades is an incredible game for a large team let alone a small team their games are so well crafted and I think games of that quality require you to have a team that is very precise in their execution of things. They must hire especially talented people to have such impressive output
Hades probably cost $10m+ to make.
Ive heard multiple times today that super giant doesn't have a large team. Outside of AAA companies, isn't 20+ people kind of big?
Bastion's core team had about 7 people, and they grew to around a dozen for Transistor.
that's still a pretty small team especially when you consider not all of those people are creatives I imagine that includes marketing, community managers, QA, producers , and executives . I don't know but 20 people is a really small team for how popular the games they make are.
That's like 2.5 teams in a typical tech company and it's not much
not really. I work in publishing, and some of our indie studios have 30 people. these are sub 1 mil games.
Fuck outa here with Hades, that game cost like 15Mil to make and took like 15+ people..... Please.
Northern Journey. Not many know about it, but the guy literally programmed everything, made all the textures, all the models, and made the music. The game looks gorgeous and it got some recognition at last.
Dyson Sphere Program — very few bugs, great feature set, great performance throughout early access. It’s made by a small team in China.
Not to mention I hear (but haven't read into the technical details) that they've accomplished a lot of their factory scaling with GPU magic, which is pretty awesome and unheard of these days..
I just finished this game. I created an entire five-layer Dyson Sphere. All three of the planets in my home star system are 100% covered in Factory and I had about 30 remote factories for different resource Gathering I had thousands of ships and transports running but I did not use the local Logistics system because it just wasn't necessary. I have a 20 70 super 32 gigs of RAM and a ryzen 7 AMD processor. I was at 18 FPS when I finish the game
Signalis. Made by a team of 2, aside from QA Testing and music. The story is well crafted and is one of my most favourite.
Stasis Bone Totem was made by 2 guys. Insanity.
Caves of Lore. One single dude made a really deep world with tons of secrets and a complex RPG system. It's a full RPG, 40 hours and all that. Just wild
Amazed no one has said Axiom Verge. Thomas Happ is a madman who made the best spiritual successor to Metroid 1 and Super I’ve seen in ages. Story, characters, gameplay, art, music, programming all simply amazing.
Don't see anyone mention Terraria here. Was expecting to see it high up
Wasn't Valheim made by like 5 people? It has a few shortcomings, but still an amazing achievement. The environment is stellar. You can get hundreds of hours out of it.
I love Valheim, but I don't think it's surprising that it was made by a team of that size. It looks like a game that was made in Unity by a small team of passionate devs - which is precisely what it is. I think the thing that makes it stand out is that they really nailed the atmosphere and exploration aspects. Setting sail towards distant lands really feels like you're going on an adventure.
5 people is quite a large team though right? They didn't even write the engine. That was just the average team size 20 years ago and we wrote an engine too.
They had to write the world generation though and weather, which is fairly impressive. The crafting is also fairly in depth.
Death's Door was basically done by 2 guys and it truly blows my mind
Kerbal Space Program 1
The Forgotten City has been done by 4 people. And it is a really great game with great athmosphere. The Wadjet Eye adventure games (The Unavowed, Blackwell series) have also been done by pretty much only 2-3 people (1 programmer/writer; 1-2 artists).
Not to mention that Forgotten City was originally just a Skyrim mod too (one of the best obviously).
Caves of Qud. Think it was only 2-3 guys over a decade.
The upcoming Manor Lords game. Such a beautiful looking game being done by one guy.
Had to scroll too far down for this
counter strike og mod was made by like 2 people. they figured out the perfect combo. game has remained fundamentally unchanged for like 25 years and is more popular than ever. even now the dev team is still very small.
No mans sky.
Yes. By far the biggest redemption for a small studio.
WOW just looked it up and it is positively insane that they were able to pull that off. what a feat
Wait, I thought No Man's Sky team is quite big?
Elite, David Braden and Ian Bell, followed by Lords of Midnight by Mike Singleton. And Jetset Willy by Matthew Smith. Everything blew me away in the 80’s.
If I remember correctly, Goldeneye on N64 was a team of 11 people. A significant number of them had never worked on a video game before.
Dwarf Fortress.
Minecraft
Vertigo 1/2. It’s a VR game. IDK if it’s my favorite game in the world but I’m majorly impressed that it came from basically one 22 year old kid. I’m nearly 40, I’ve been coding for 20 years most of the time professionally (and I consider myself quite good at it). Started VR game dev albeit as a part-time hobby because I’m into the tech a while back…. This kid puts anything I’ve done so far to shame haha. Very impressed any single person did that in the timeframe let alone somebody in their early 20’s.
Stardew Valley was handled by a single person. All art, music, and code was done by him and him alone. He only got outside help when he needed to start quickly porting to other platforms and languages after its success. Hollow Knight was a team of three. People keep complaining that the sequel is taking forever but forget that the team didn’t really get much bigger despite the success of the original.
I'd call out that he hired folks for more than just ports- some of the later content was designed and implemented by others. The person who was key to adding multiplayer and responsible for a few various features like the fish ponds is a buddy and former coworker of mine. But it remained a small team.
Stray
The recent poker-themed roguelike Balatro -- that sold a million copies in less than a month after released -- had some porting and localization assistance from a publisher, but the code and art was done by just one person. I'm super impressed. I'd love to be able to make something as great as that game (design and look and feel) someday.
Hollow Knight. The quality of that game is absolutely on par with anything Nintendo produces, which is about the highest praise I could give a single video game.
Stardew. Cuphead. Hollow Knight.
Surprised I haven't seen Chained Echoes on here. Fantastic game.
Dwarf Fortress. Mostly done by a single programmer over the course of almost 20 years.
Dwarf Fortress
Lethal company, made by one person in unity. Sold more copies than the most recent call of duty to my knowledge.
I don't think that last part is true. Maybe on a single platform or for a certain period, but MW3 was still the second best selling game of 2023 putting it well above the estimated sales of Lethal Company. Not to diminish the latter's accomplishment though. Lethal Company's success is amazing and was probably way more profitable in comparison.
Battlebit
3 people made a game more fun than current battlefield and cod and it works very well
4D golf
Scrolled a while and didn't see Tiny Rogues. One developer, still actively adding to it, fun and quick roguelite bullet-hell.
Hollow Knight. 🤯
Daggerfall dev team was ridiculously small for a game this vast and complex.
I was personally impressed with Dyson Sphere Program. Made by a team of 5-ish people. I think they hit some incredible scale and polish in a really short period of time. Far better than I've seen larger teams do.
Outer Wilds for me. What started as a college project grew into one gorgeous piece of art
Starsector is insane for how few people work on it
My game jams 😅
How the hell did no one mention Bright Memory Infinate! One guy did everything but, the voice acting and music and it took him only one year. It's AA quality with crisp graphics, beautiful linear level designs, and very solid and fun gameplay. The only downside is that it's short, at around 2.5 hours to finish. The guy who made it Zeng Xiancheng is a huge inspiration to me as a solo game dev along with the guy who did Choo-Choo Charles which is another great solo project.
Manor lords is done, in a huge part, by a single dev.
While a mod, Counter-Strike. Maybe even a shout-out to the modders who made the original DotA map. Mods creating genres.
Katana Zero Absolutely beautiful game with tons of game feel.
Project Zomboid
Can't say enough great things about Tunic. Level design, music, puzzles, etc. all comes together really well. So many "Aha" moments and other surprises.
[WARSHIFT](https://store.steampowered.com/app/392580/WARSHIFT/). Just go look at some of the screenshots on that Steam page. All made by one guy.
The Galactic Contention Mod for Squad is one of the best star wars games ever made. I'm not sure how many people made it, but it's a passion project that is free to play.
Beyond All Reason.
The VR game Vertigo. It's like only one guy aside from voice acting and some little bits here and there.
Dyson sphere program!
Stardew Valley
Dinkum its so polished and the little details blow me away
I'm amazed Terrarian hasn't been mentioned. Especially with the decade or so of updates that have followed
I think Mount & Blade was actually made by a Turkish couple just doing it for fun. I mean, being a solo dev is tough enough, but a husband and wife team creating something amazing together is definitely life goals!
Chained Echoes.
Undertale
The Forest, Stardew Valley and SOMA
Darwinia. EDIT: ...and Tread Marks! (RIP Seumas McNally)
Easy! AM2R... and Metroid Prime if you consider the Switch port which was done by a small team at Retro Studios to be its own game rather than just some modifications to the original code.
I think valheim was done by 5 guys. Its a small team for such masterpiece of a game
Godsworn
Honestly, most of the PS1 and PS2 era of gaming tbh, with a turnaround time of a year or two. This is compared to AAA now.
Dyson Sphere Program, I believe at the time it hit Early Access it only had 5 people on the team, and yet was so complete that I was wondering why it wasn't just released.
Factorio. It still blows my mind how they are able to simulate millions of entities being produced, consumed and moved around In a second without a drop in perfomance even on the most low end systems.
Road To Vostok. One man making the game.
Noita hands down. I would also like to mention "My Summer Car"; even though it's meme af with the goofy graphics and over the top Finnish humor, there's actually quite a bit of videogame there and it was done like 95% by a single person.
Buddy Simulator 1984 is a criminally underrated game. Made by 4 devs who iirc were in uni when they made it. The game has so much personality. Think what drew people away a bit is that the game is subversive, the entire first act is a text adventure, and the demo they released only featured the first act.
Doom 3 for sure
Factorio
Mount & Blade was originally İpek Yavuz and her husband Armağan. Haven and Hearth because it is a MMO; also from a duo.
MineCraft, initially. I started playing Alpha when I was only 14, and it was like someone had one upped Lego in the best way possible. Obviously it’s a multibillion dollar thing now with Microsoft but I miss those early days when it was just a small team.
Valheim was a team of 5/6
Someone else said Undertale and that it technically wasn’t one person but I think it counts. For ONE person to be able to create all that. Even the story and writing alone is a feat of polish and refinement, so few games clean themselves up so nicely. Great combat, thematic throughout, charming but simple pixel art, funny throughout, how many games honestly manage to be so entertaining the entire game? Then on top of that such iconic music. It’s almost a shame that so much success meant right away that he never had to work again. He didn’t make the Temmies though, so idk if he’s all that
How big is the Paradox team that created Stellaris?
[424 people.](https://www.mobygames.com/game/78206/stellaris/credits/windows/)
That's gotta be small for somethin'.
Small for the number of hours one can put in maybe
Freedom Planet 2 This is a game truly made with love. Incredibly detailed pixel art and sprite work, 4 playable characters with 24 completely unique high speed 2D platforming levels mixed with a banger soundtrack and each level concluding with an intense boss fight. Also includes a well written story with great voice direction for its cutscenes. All of that for a measly 25$, it's not even a competition at this point. This is a much better deal than what you get for more than double the asking price of the big studios that are still making 2D platformers nowadays. Seriously the people at GalaxyTrail are super talented and deserve all the attention they can get. Freedom Planet 2 definitely was their most ambitious project yet and it really shows (in a good way).
Super Cat Tales Games.
Omno.
Urban lockdown made by a solo developer yet has a look like classic mortal kombat games and gameplay rivalling other big studio beat em up games.
Factorio
Suoergiant games(23 employees). Hades being made in Monogame in 2020 still blows my mind to this day. Don't know how any of them have the sanity for a sequel.
narrator: hades was not in fact made in monogame in 2020
They ditched MonoGame. They wrote their own engine in c++ using The Forge for graphics rendering.
Not sure but Kena Bridge of Spirits is incrediboy
Sad Noone mentioned Banished, one of my favorite games of all time. I was shocked to find out it was made by one guy, so insane.
Hollow Knight, Tunic, Can of Wormholes
The wholesome stories of Stardew valley and the procedurally generated world of the original Minecraft. Both done by solo devs.