How Long Does It Take to Make a Game? Estimator

Answer a few questions about your game's size, content, art and audio and your team, and this estimator gives a low, likely and high number of weeks with a breakdown of hours by area. Every hour figure behind it is a rough rule of thumb you can see and change, so you can swap in your own pace.

Step 1 of 3: Game
How big is the game?
A short, polished game, such as a 1 to 3 hour indie release.
2D or 3D?

How to use it

  1. Pick Game jam, Small game or Medium game, choose 2D or 3D and press Next.
  2. Adjust the number of levels, enemy types, characters and core mechanics, choose Make it, Buy or license it or Placeholder for art and for music and sound, and press Next.
  3. Enter the people on the team, the hours a week each one works and your experience.
  4. Press Estimate time to see the range and the hours by area.
  5. Change any number under Assumptions behind this estimate to match your own pace, then press Copy as markdown.

How the estimate is built

The estimator multiplies each piece of content by an hour figure: hours per mechanic, per level, per enemy type and per character, plus art and audio hours for every level, enemy and character. It adds fixed time for menus, the HUD and saving, adds a percentage of the build time for polish, testing and bug fixing, and adds time for builds, the store page and launch.

That total is multiplied by an experience factor (1.5 for a first game, 1 after a few games, 0.8 for a team that has shipped commercially) and divided by the team's weekly hours. Each extra person adds coordination time, 10% by default, because a team spends hours on planning, reviews and merging work that a solo developer does not.

The range runs from 0.75 times to 1.75 times the likely figure. It is wider above than below on purpose: unknown problems, redesigns and scope creep make games run late far more often than early.

Where the default numbers come from

The defaults are rough rules of thumb, not measured data, and each scope has its own set. For a small game they assume about 30 hours to build and tune one core mechanic, 8 hours per level, 10 hours to code an enemy type and 12 hours of art per level, enemy or character when you make it yourself. A jam game uses far smaller figures because a jam build only needs to be playable, not polished.

Bought or licensed art and audio count as a quarter of the hours of making them, since you still find, edit and fit them into the game. Placeholder assets count as a tenth. 3D art counts as twice the hours of 2D art, because modeling, texturing and rigging take longer than drawing sprites for most small teams.

The best defaults are your own. Time a single level or enemy from start to finish on your project, then enter that figure. One measured number beats any rule of thumb.

Making the number smaller

Content counts drive most of the total, so cutting levels and enemy types shortens the project far more than working faster. Many developers finish more games by making one small game first, then reusing its code and tools for the next one.

Use placeholder art while you test whether the game is fun, and buy assets for parts players will not judge the game on. Spend your making time on what makes the game stand out.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to make a game?
Anything from a weekend for a game jam entry to several years for a large indie game. The biggest factors are how much content the game has and how many hours a week the team works on it, which is what this estimator asks for.
How long does it take one person to make an indie game?
With the default small game, one person who has made a few games and works 15 hours a week comes out at about 69 weeks, or 16 months, of likely time. Working full time or cutting content shortens it a lot.
How accurate is a game development time estimate?
Treat it as a planning range, not a promise. The defaults are rules of thumb, so the estimate gets better when you replace them with hours you have measured on your own project.
Does adding more people make a game faster?
Usually, but not in proportion. Each extra person adds time for coordination, which the estimator counts as 10% per extra team member by default.
Why is game development always late?
Problems you cannot see yet, redesigns after playtesting and features added along the way all add time, while very little ever goes faster than planned. That is why the high estimate is further from the likely figure than the low one.

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