That’s a bit of a silly question isn’t it? If you can work on a game by yourself, why wouldn’t you be able to work in a team for a larger project? In an attempt to answer that question myself, for the last two game jams I have participated in, I worked in different teams to produce the games.

To team...

The latest game that I worked on, No Launch, submitted for the Patch Notes game jam, has garnered some successes in the jam and the community. At the time of writing this, the jam has not concluded yet so I will have to wait for the final results, but I am hopeful it will do well in the ranking. 

Madeleine and Biscuit, submitted for Brackeys jam 2025.2, which happened before this Patch Notes game jam, is a game that I worked on as its only programmer. Despite its relative success (final ranking#97 in Overall out of 2,297 entries), it almost made me want to quit collaborating and go back to do solo dev, because of its tumultuous development process and subsequent falling out with my then teammates. You can read about it here in my postmortem for that game. I’m glad I didn’t quit collaborating, however, because I genuinely enjoyed my time working on No Launch with my new team.

...Or not to team?

Like a lot of other game devs, branding myself as a solo developer of games was a big part of my identity in the community. In recent years, I think it has been becoming more and more popular for beginners or dev-curious people to want to become and stay a solo dev, owning to the huge success stories of solo devs such as Stadew Valley, Undertale and Deltarune, and most recently, Balatro.

I admit at first I was enamored with the idea as well. Being a solo dev has a lot of positives to it. 

1. For one, it’s entirely your idea and your vision that you are putting on the screen, so the games that you produce are yours and yours alone, making them an extension of your personality. Many creative people want to express themselves through their works, and being a solo dev allows them that freedom that being in a team may not. 
2. If your game sells, you are the sole benefactor of that monetary gain (well, after you shill out 30% of your revenue to Gabe, of course, and any extra if you decide to work with a publisher for a commercial release). 
3. It allows you to touch the game in areas that you may not be proficient with yet, and allows you to learn them. 
4. Teamwork is a skill that you need to hone as any others, and that takes time and energy that many people are not interested in spending.

As I continued on my path of solo development, however, I realized that I would not be able to become proficient in many areas to produce a good game in a reasonable amount of time. So in recent jams I went looking for teams or tried to organize my own - which I did for my last two teams. The root of the problem in the Brackeys team was that I was scared to work with other programmers on the team.

I was scared of having our technical knowledge not on par with each others’, and having to spend time learning to work with each other instead of working on the project. So I didn’t look for other programmers for Brackeys. 

For the Patch Notes jam, however, following the distressful experience I have with being a solo dev on a team of other creative people, I explicitly set out to recruit people who have had experience in working on games in-engine (being the Godot engine), in order to be able to share workload. I even recruited someone who was explicitly only doing game designing and project management, of which he did a great job managing everyone’s tasks so I can focus on the dev work. I was lucky to find a team of dedicated, self-managed people who worked really hard on the project, which resulted in us submitting a well-polished entry to the jam that has received praise from a lot of players.

In working on this project, I had an epiphany.

As humans, we all want to feel in control at all times. That’s what I wanted to feel in my game projects too. I wanted my games to be uniquely me, and not a product of hundreds of cogs in a machine, like in a AAA game studio. Isn’t that why we come to indie games in the first place? However, in pursuit of that, I had my grip on that ideal clenched so tightly that it didn’t allow me to see other possibilities. The possibility of letting other people join you in your quest. Sure, maybe your vision of the game could somewhat shift from your initial thoughts, because your teammates have their own unique opinions and goals too. But what’s more important is that we all work together towards the same vision, after all our ideas have collided and coagulated. When you let go of the false sense of control, you open yourself to the freedom of having other people put their own fingerprints into the project too, and elevate it beyond what you thought possible. The sum of all our work is more than its parts.

What's next?

We had a great time developing this game. It’s been the longest time I remember having fun during development of a game. The spontaneous livestream playtesting sessions were hilarious, and something I didn’t know I needed. We are still anxiously waiting for the result of the jam, of which we are hopeful. There are plans to have post-jam updates for the game, and who knows, maybe it could become something more than a fun weekend project. You can try out the game here or download it at the bottom of the page.

In the near future, we plan to stick together to join other jams, the earliest one being Jamcepticeye in early October 2025. Hopefully you will join us for our next game. Happy deving.