RelicWar - A retrospective

I spent five whole years working on RelicWar as my first Indie title. The game released in September 2025:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1646800/RelicWar/

Let's see where I went wrong and where things went right.

Multiplayer

Lets start with the biggest elephant in the room. I started this project as a cool learning experience of how a multiplayer game is put together. While this was great for learning, it mean's putting together any feature in my game is now x10 times harder than single player. I'm happy with the technical aspects of how I made everything work and also that I could support AI/Bot players to allow single player sessions but for my first game this was really unnecessary complexity.

Music/SFX and Art

One aspect that gets many compliments is the music and in game pixel art. I was wise to hire some freelance work for this as it speeded up the development of the game content immensely. The guys I took on are experts in the field and delivered on everything I asked for. To attempt learning these would have taken so much of my time and I would not have been able to deliver such quality.

Gameplay

Programming this game turned out to be a struggle at times. It was far more complex than I imagined it would be and I had many complex issues to resolve. I feel the gameplay is much better than before but I shouldn't be doing major surgery after the game has released. A lesson learned here is to really nail the core gameplay loop early in the process.

Scope

Oh boy, this is a big one. The main reason the game took so long to deliver on top of the complex multiplayer aspect is the scope of the game was never-ending. I had a list of TODO items that I just kept on adding to and as a result it felt there was no end to this cycle. Eventually I hit a breaking point of - this game needs to be released now - I want my life back. I then moved all my TODO items into a possible v2 lane - if that ever happens. This drastic change allowed me to focus entirely on the Steam related tasks I had to do in order to hit my release date.

Steam Next Fest and Marketing

I entered Steam Next Fest and backed out so many times. Each time I entered I was feeling hopefully rather than actually ready. This is why I ended up backing out so often. I didn't really record good footage for the Fest and I feel I didn't really market my game during the Fest either. I was quite tired/burnt out at this point so that is likely why.

Overall my marketing of the game was quite poor and initially I didn't really know what I was creating in terms of the genre. So marketing as something with tactics when it's light in that area is a bit of a mistake on my part. A big part of marketing is confidence in your game - I was lacking this as I wasn't truly happy with certain aspects of my game, so I didn't go as hard on promoting it.

Execution and Maintenance

If I was to say some areas where my game fell down is the execution on my part. Many aspects of the game I felt could be better but I created such a monster scope I felt I was stretching myself thin in terms of just getting things just about functional/done - so I could move onto the next thing. The problem with a large scope is the game feels like a burden to maintain, as I'm only one person who works full time already. So I do feel like overall I bit off more than I can chew here as an individual developer.

Congrats - you released a niche game

Unfortunately I based my game idea on Battle Hunter a niche PSX title, so as a result my game is also super niche. Can I expect much players - probably not? The next game I plan to be a bit more accessible to new players and gain a larger following.

Next time?

Naturally my next game won't be Multiplayer, won't have a massive never-ending scope and I plan to execute features much better. I'd also be looking to improve the marketing from day one and wait to enter Steam Next Fest when I feel the game is fully ready. No more entering the Steam Next Fest based on some sort of delusional hope. Also I would like to fully solo dev the next title to get that full experience but in the short term I'm going to focus entirely on learning music/SFX production, improving graphics editing skills and creating prototypes during 2026.