Hello and Welcome, I’m your Code Monkey!

My advice is how you should make more games, because every game you make gives you knowledge and skills which increases the odds of success in your next game.
Based on that advice one funny comment I've seen is: “If every game I make gives me knowledge and skills that increase the odds of success on the next one by 1%, then I only need to make 100 games to make a $1million game!”

And honestly, while that might sound slightly silly I think it's actually true! If you make 100 games you will gain an insane amount of knowledge where it's basically impossible for game #101 to be bad!

Part of the reason that really helped me in becoming a successful game dev was the 5 years that I spend making Flash games. In that time I made over 40(!) games, that’s a lot! I truly believe that is what gave me an insane amount of experience that then helped me find success when I moved on to making proper Steam games.

This is also yet another reason why I recommend you make small games. (what is a small games?) If each of your games takes 2 years, then in 20 years you can literally only make 10 games. That’s not a huge gain in experience. Whereas if you make games in 6 months then in 20 years you can make 40 games! Imagine that.

Do you think you could be successful on your 41st game? I think so!

And of course in the beginning if you’re making games just for learning you can definitely build something in just 1-4 weeks. I recommend for beginners to start by remaking classic games like Flappy Bird and Lunar Lander. I covered that in my roadmap here.

So yup if you're the kind of person who suffers from analysis paralysis hearing all sorts of advice on how to find success with gamedev, then perhaps just following this advice can help you. Just focus on making 100 games, and only worry about success after doing that. Chances are by the end of this "exercise" you will already be successful and won't need any more advice.

Thanks for reading! Best of luck in your game dev journey!