How I wasted $4k+ and half a year of my life to develop a game that earned only $30

Postmortem analysis of Drunk Shotgun

Drunk Shotgun Logo

What is Drunk Shotgun?

TL;DR

Idea

5 things that went right

Game engine and renderer

Final game build does not utilize any 2D lightning, but uses transparent gradients for light halos

Game Art

Sketches for the menu art produced by artist
Final menu art with UI elements

Music and sound

Several shells exploding at the same time

Architecture

Animation

5 things that went wrong

Iterating and prototype testing

Prototype of Drunk Shotgun created with free graphic assets

Gameplay progression, difficulty curve and monetization

Extra life and Game Over screens

Pre-launch and launch

Post-launch Marketing

Gameplay video used for Instagram Ad

Animation (once again)

Example of character broken up in movable parts from the design requirements document. Character Art by Riley Gombart (opengameart.org)
Jack walking out of a bar

Bonus: Android Release

Original screenshot vs Google Play Store version. I actually start to like the right one better.

Statistics

Worktime

Money spent

Ads conversion

Revenue

Key takeaways

Intro, tutorial and gameplay video. Actual gameplay starts at 1:42

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CTO at listenable.com / Indie Game Developer / CoFounder at Pure.dating / More projects: datagreed.pro

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