GDC Festival of Gaming
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2020–2022
31:07 · 521K views · Mar 27, 2020
Adam Robinson-Yu's GDC 2020 talk on how he shelved a big project to prototype what became A Short Hike. He covers the solo development process and technical choices like a pixel shader over low-poly models.
HN people cite it for solo-dev inspiration and for the rendering technique behind the game's look.
4 comments from Hacker News
You might want to watch this for inspiration: Short Hike Post-mortem ( this video ) about single developer struggles. Of course, this is one of successful stories, so your mileage might (and will) vary. Give yourself tight deadlines and see if you can stick to them. Do not be afraid to bail out early, if you see that game development is not working out. I'd suggest keeping your daily job until you at least have minimal working prototype of your game and get positive feedback. As for games on mobile platforms, be prepared if you will create something new and unique - it will have dozen of clones on day three after launch.
Nice. The resulting graphics style reminds me of a Short Hike, which is a family friendly bite sized 3D adventure and exploration game. I'm not affiliated in any way, just enjoyed the game with my kid. It has a nice balance of story, challenges, and some platformer action. [LINK] Edit: IIRC the shader a Short Hike used was discussed in the GDC talk by the game's author: this video
Not the same method, but as I recall the developer of the game A Short Hike did a similar procedure - mostly to allow him to quickly draft 3D models and hide the low-poly models, artifacts, and "glitches" behind the pixel shader. this video GDC presentation by the developer of A Short Hike My review: a fun, calming, and enjoyable 2 hour game with a heartwarming ending.
Maybe not the greatest story but definitely one of the loveliest games I've played was A Short Hike. It is a kinda short (~5-6h) feel good game in which you more or less just have to explore a holiday island and meet different other Animals The developer held a talk on the GDC how he made the game: this video