Would love some help/advice on deciding my first commercial project

[quick sapphire]

Hey everyone, hope this is the right place to post something like this. So, I think I'm finally comfortable enough with game dev and Godot to begin making my first proper game. I'm currently working solo and likely will stay that way for now. However, I've been thinking a lot about what genre I should tackle first, since my idea is to make a relatively simple and quick project for starting out, instead of betting years on a project that might just flop because of bad luck or poor marketing, so I was thinking a year of dev time tops.

All that said, I've been leaning into the idea of making a WW2 themed 3D tower defense game with simple stylized graphics. I feel like I could develop it in a short amount of time and make it fun and well polished, but I'm afraid the target audience just isn't big enough for it to be worth it. Any ideas or thoughts? Thanks!

[carmine mantle]

Honestly. Make what you want. There might be fewer people interested in WW2 games. But combining it as a tower defence would surely grab more players. Tower defence games are usually popular.

[quick sapphire]

Perhaps perhaps. I'm just too affraid to juts do whatever I want cuz I really need at least some income from this lol

[spark veldt]

If you must have income work for someone else. It doesn't matter what you build, there is no guarantee you'll make anything off it.

[carmine mantle]

Personally, I am saying this as a student but it’s gonna be what I will do in the future, find a job to get your passive income from that. And have game dev as a hobby on the side to give you some additional income. Or work for someone else like the other guy said. But then again, having another lil job on the side apart from the game dev will help out since you never know if the game will hit.

[quick sapphire]

Ye, there's no guarantee, but I can probably improve or worsen the odds based on what I pick as a first project. I do have a full time job, but I'm gonna need some extra to get things going.

[carmine mantle]

I’d say. Give it a shot.
A good way to do it is by making it, but also not make it. (As in making the game but also not)
You could do dev blogs in YT about your game and what you add to it to make players interested. Then when you have a decent amount of a game, not fully just playable, you can make it a demo that others can buy.

So you keep it small with a demo and if it sells good you can decide to do some future development into that game

[quick sapphire]

Fair enough. Might give it a shot