Game Dev

What exactly is a Small Game? What is a good release schedule?

I always recommend you make small games. They are great both for learning really quickly, and for having better odds of financial success.
 
But "small games" is very relative, everyone has different ideas of what that means. Some people think it means 1 weekend games, others think 1 year counts as small.
 
And based on that, what kind of release cycle do I recommend per year?
 
First I would say it depends on your skill level.

If you're a complete beginner then I would say first learn the basics through some tutorial or guided course, and then when you're making games by yourself start off super small like 1 weekend to 1 week games.
 
Then you basically just go from there. So then make a 2 week game, then a 1 month game, then a 2 month game, then 3 months, then 6 months. And I would only do something over 6 months once you have published a bunch of games and are very confident in your own skills. 6-12 months would be my recommended sweet spot once you're already experienced.
 
I would not recommend going over 12 months UNLESS you have validated your idea and you know you're on the right track.
For example if you work on a game for 10 months, you have a demo out and it has gotten 50k wishlists and you think spending an extra 6 months would greatly improve the game, then sure at that point do it because with 50k wishlists you have guaranteed sales and beyond that it's up to the quality of the game. If those extra 6 months help push the game from a 8/10 to a 9/10 it can genuinely 10x your total lifetime sales. In that scenario it is worth it.

One common pushback against this advice of “make small games” is when I hear comments saying: “I don’t want to make slop!” implying that if you spend a relatively short amount of time making something then it HAS to be slop. That’s not true at all.

Practical example: PEAK, made in 6 weeks. Players love it, made millions of dollars.

Second recent example: A Game About Feeding a Black Hole. Made in 5 months, made over $500,000 in the first month. Players love it.

As long as you are skilled, you can definitely build a ton of quality in a relatively short timeframe. And if you’re not skilled then just keep gaining experience until you do gain that skill.
 
Personally if I was just spending all my time making games and nothing else, no educational stuff, then I would be making basically 2 games per year, 6 months each, and doing that until the end of time. My last game Dinky Guardians (it’s currently on sale by the way) was made in 7 months, and that was sort of part time since I was keeping my YouTube channel alive at the same time.
 
Also remember how your skills greatly impact what you can build in X timeframe. The more experience you gain the better you become and the more you can build in the same timeframe. A beginner will probably only be able to make a very basic game in 6 months, but if you have a decade of experience like me, then 6 months is more than enough time to make a pretty big complex game, like Dinky Guardians which is an Automation, Strategy, Survival, Colony Building game.

So if you want to make more complex games, instead of spending more time working on a game with your beginner skills, I would advise you to build up your skills so that the games that you can produce in those same 6 months get more and more complex.
 
Best of luck in your game dev journey!