Where I've Been: Solo Dev, Scope Creep, and Overwhelm

So... it's been a while.

My last post went up at the end of November, and then I pretty much vanished for about six months. No posts, no updates, not a peep. If you were wondering whether MultiBit was dead, that's a fair question, and I owe you an answer.

Short version: it's not dead. It's actually in a much better place than it was. But getting here meant admitting a few things about how I work, so let's get into it.

Solo Dev Is Like Working Out Alone

You know how it's way easier to stick with the gym when you have a workout buddy? Someone who's expecting you at 6am, who notices when you skip leg day, who pushes you through that last set?

Building something solo is the same, minus the buddy.

There's nobody to commit with. Nobody to bounce ideas off of when you're stuck between two approaches at 11pm. Nobody to say "hey, are you sure we need that?" before you spend three weeks building it. And nobody to notice when you quietly stop showing up.

I've led teams before, and I didn't fully appreciate how much the team part was doing for me. Accountability, sanity checks, momentum. When you're on your own, you have to manufacture all of that yourself, and some days you just... don't.

Confession: I Love Systems More Than Games

Here's the thing about me. I'm an engineer at heart. And as much as I love games, I really love building the systems that make games work. Give me a gnarly problem like "how do placement rules work across different map layouts" and I'm a happy camper for weeks.

That's great for building a game engine. It's terrible for scope control.

Case in point: layouts. At one point, MultiBit was on track to support four different ways of arranging things in a game scene:

• Card-based group layouts: the original, simplest version. Components sat in predefined groups, like cards laid out on a table.
• Grouped placement: components clustered together in zones on the scene.
• Isometric tiles: the classic farm-sim look, where everything snaps to a diamond grid.
• Absolute layout: put anything anywhere you want on the scene.

Every one of these is a fun engineering problem. And every one of them multiplies the work. Every new feature has to play nicely with every layout. Every editor tool has to handle every layout. Every bug might exist in four flavors.

I bit off way more than I could chew.

Scope Creep Turns Into Overwhelm

Scope creep doesn't feel like a problem while it's happening. Each addition seems reasonable on its own. It's only when you step back and look at the whole pile that you realize you're nowhere near done, and the finish line keeps moving further away.

That's where I ended up. Every time I sat down to work on MultiBit, I'd look at everything that still needed doing and feel tired before I'd written a single line of code.

So I stepped away and focused on some other projects for a while. And honestly? I think that was the right call. Sometimes you need distance to see what actually matters.

Coming Back: Cutting Scope

When I came back, the first thing I did wasn't build anything new. It was cut.

The biggest cut: MultiBit now commits to one layout style, absolute. You place things where you want them in the scene, full stop.

• No isometric tiles (for now).
• No separate grouped placement. This one didn't really go away, it got folded into absolute layout, so you can still group things together in a scene.
• No card-based group layout. It was the simplest version, and the one that got me started, but it had served its purpose.

The nice part is that this doesn't close the door on the other styles. Absolute layout is the most flexible foundation, so the plan is that other layouts, like isometric tiles, can eventually be added as a calculated layout layer on top of it. The layer does the math to figure out where things go, and the engine underneath still just sees "this thing lives at this spot." One engine, many looks.

Same destination, way less weight to carry on the way there.

What Cutting Bought Me

Cutting scope didn't just shrink the to-do list. It gave me my energy back. For the first time in a long while, I was excited to sit down and work on MultiBit again, because the thing in front of me felt finishable.

And with that energy, I finally built the thing that had been bugging me the most: a brand new way to build your game while you play it. That story gets its own post: From Web Forms to Build As You Play.

What I'd Tell Another Solo Dev

If you're building something on your own and any of this sounds familiar, here's what I took away from the last six months:

• Find your workout buddy. Even if it's not a co-founder, find someone to check in with, share progress, and argue with about your ideas.
• Know your weakness. Mine is falling in love with systems. Yours might be polishing, or research, or rewriting. Name it so you can catch it.
• Cut before you build. The fastest way to make progress was to delete work from the plan, not add hours to the day.
• Pick a foundation that leaves doors open. Committing to one layout didn't mean giving up on the others, just doing them later, and doing them right.
• Taking a break isn't quitting. I came back with more clarity than I left with.

And if you're a solo dev looking for that accountability buddy, come hang out in our Discord. Maybe we can keep each other honest.

Want to Build One Yourself?

I'm building this platform so that you can make simulation, story and resource management games without touching code.

If you're a creator, coach, or storyteller looking for a more powerful way to connect with your audience, or you just want to build a game without writing code, head to multibit.games to sign up for early access.

It's good to be back!