GameDevBits Indie Expedition

Join your peers and find support, motivation, advice and tutorials to help you get to the finish line for Dec 1st. Join a group of people on the same path as you to lean on when you need advice, encouragement or someone to help test.

This is the foundation of your game. What are you creating? Not in vague terms, but with crystal-clear specificity. It’s not enough to say, “I want a game with heroes.” Instead, envision exactly what your players will experience. Are they choosing between Tom the Swordsman, with his gleaming blade and steadfast courage, or Alex the Archer, with a quiver full of arrows and a knack for precision?

It’s not “nine worlds to explore.” It’s “a sprawling tundra of Snow World with five frigid levels, a molten and treacherous Lava World with seven levels, and a sun-scorched Desert World with four levels.” Planning in detail ensures that when it’s time to refine, you can cut what’s unnecessary without losing your vision. Build your roadmap with clarity and intention, so nothing is left to guesswork when development begins.

Here’s where your idea takes its first breath of life. Your goal is a working game—not a complete one, not a perfect one, but a functional skeleton of the larger vision. Even the grandest RPGs begin humbly: a small village with one house, two roaming wolves to defeat, and a quest to collect wolf tails.

The essentials should shine here. Your menus should open and close. The game should pause, save, and quit without hiccups. This is the stage where you prove your game exists and works, even if it’s just the simplest version of itself. A shaky MVP is better than an unplayable dream.

With the bones in place, it’s time to flesh out your creation. Add depth, variety, and richness to the world you’ve built. Whether it’s more levels, new characters, thrilling abilities, additional quests, or that extra type of power-up that makes players smile, this is where you turn a small prototype into something with scale and substance.

This stage is about building momentum. You’re no longer just proving the concept—you’re creating the experience. It’s the exciting stage where creativity is unleashed, and the game starts to take on a life of its own. Every piece you add makes the world richer, the gameplay more engaging, and the vision more complete.

Now it’s time to take the rough edges and smooth them out into something truly playable. Placeholder assets? Replace them with real designs. Broken mechanics? Patch them up. You won’t have time to perfect everything (and that’s okay!), but your goal is to focus on what truly matters.

Make it functional, make it presentable, and make it something players can enjoy. Prioritise the pieces that create the best experience—there’s no time to chase perfection. This is about building a game that’s polished enough to shine, even if it’s not flawless. It’s a creative sprint to the finish line, where attention to detail makes all the difference.

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The moment you’ve worked so hard for—your game is ready to meet the world! Whether it’s finding its home on Steam, Itch.io, or another platform, this is the final step where all your effort pays off. It’s no longer just your dream; it’s in players’ hands, ready to entertain, challenge, and inspire.

This isn’t the end, though—it’s the beginning of your game’s life beyond development. Celebrate the journey, because you’ve done what so many only dream of: you’ve launched a game!