The solo developer of the village-building game Banished writes about game development, engine work, graphics drivers and porting.
Commenters hold up Banished as a lasting hit built by one person with his own engine, and point to the blog's technical detail.
Banished [0], Starcraft [1], Starcraft 2 [2], SPAZ [3], FTL [4], AoE HD [5], TF2 [6], CS:Source [7], Minecraft [8], Kerbal Space Program [9], SpaceChem [10]. I'm sure there are more but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
[0] http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/
[1] http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/sc/
[2] http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/
[3] http://minmax-games.com/SpacePiratesAndZombies/
[4] http://www.ftlgame.com/
[5] http://store.steampowered.com/app/221380/
[6] http://www.teamfortress.com/
[7] http://store.steampowered.com/app/240/
[8] https://minecraft.net/
[9] https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/
[10] http://www.spacechemthegame.com/
EDIT: Added some more
Banished
https://shiningrocksoftware.com/
One person made an outstanding village-building game that has not only stood the test of time (released 8 years ago) but also spawned dozens of imitators and a robust modding community. It's sold at least 2 million copies (based on outdated info I could find) and is frequently referenced in gaming media with the reverence of a classic.
This reminded me of Banished [1], a game developed by a single developer who also wrote his own engine (though in C++). His development blog [2] goes into quite a lot of technical detail.
[1] http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/
[2] http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/
Not really. One of the major parts of the OSX port is opengl support which he has been working on since at least March. http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/2015-03-14-porting-opengl-and-shaders/
That's what's possible as a one man project:
http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/
AFAIK he did all the game design, coding and assets (models, textures, sounds etc.)
I quite like sim building games. My most recent favourite is Banished http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/ Not nearly as complex as sim city but still very enjoyable