Amazing Brok Post-mortem: What $600 can teach you

It’s been over a month since we release Amazing Brok (available for iOS and Android). It’s been over a year since we started developing it. We took away several lessons that, hopefully, we will apply going forward. It is also our hope that this will be helpful to others.

The Ninety-ninety Rule Is Real

I have heard this cliche so many times, and still I was fooled into thinking we had dodged it somehow. I can be hopelessly optimistic at times. For the last 4 months of development, I was self-deluded into thinking that we were 2 weeks away from completion. I was even aware, at several different points during that time, that my previous 2 week estimate had expired. And yet I still thought 2 more weeks!

This wasn’t the end of the world for us. We both have day jobs, so we weren’t depending on sales to pay rent. If you happen to be in that (bad) position, I’d suggest making financial arrangements for at least 3 times as long as you think it’ll take. Well, first I’d suggest getting a job with a dependable income.

Finishing Is Hard

Know the Tools

Do the Math

 

Prototypes and Post-mortems

I was planning on doing a post-mortem for Amazing Brok tonight, but I can’t figure out what I want to say. I’m working on it, and will try to have it finished by Monday. In the meantime, you may be interested to know that we’ve come up with an idea for our next project that we think will be a lot of fun. We’ve worked out what we want to see in the prototype, and will hopefully have something for you guys to play with soon.