The Vulnerability Of An Indie

Author: by Staff

In Gamasutra's latest feature, a postmortem of iOS title Flick Buddies, Australian indie Bane Games discusses how a small staff can create huge dependencies when the unexpected arises. "Our initial estimate was to create the game in two months part-time... After just one month of development, our artist fell sick, was admitted to hospital and was out of action for almost an entire month," writes programmer Alistair Doulin. The Bane Games team comprised just four members. "This couldn't have come at a worse time as the gameplay was nearing completion and we were moving into a production period where the critical path was almost exclusively in art. This stalled the project and put us almost an entire month behind schedule," he writes. Fortunately, the artist recovered completely. "With only one person handling each 'department' of the game, we are in the position where if any one person is sick the game development slows considerably," he writes. Doulin himself later lost three days of productivity when heavy flooding in Australia left him without power for three days -- another unforeseen circumstance that could not be prevented. Have a solution to this sort of dependency? Leave a comment with a suggestion for the Flick Buddies team. The full feature, Postmortem: Bane Games' Flick Buddies, is live now on Gamasutra.