Post-Mortem: 9 Mistakes That Kill Indie Games

In game development a post-mortem is the write-up a team does after a project. Read enough of them and the same causes of death keep turning up. Post-Mortem collects nine of them as case files.

Each file has the symptoms you can spot early, the evidence (store rules and published data where they exist, clearly labelled illustrative charts where they don't), an autopsy of how it kills a game, a short prevention list and a test you can run on your own project today.

The case files

• 01 Death by scope: the game grew faster than the team could build it.
• 02 Built in silence: nobody knew the game existed when it came out.
• 03 Nobody was looking: made for an audience that doesn't search for it.
• 04 The first five minutes: players quit, and refund, before the fun.
• 05 The invisible capsule: key art that doesn't say what the game is.
• 06 It feels wrong: input and feedback that don't connect.
• 07 Launched into a wall: a date where players' attention was already spent.
• 08 Mixed: early reviews about bugs and missing basics.
• 09 The developer stopped: a pace that couldn't last to the end.

The cases are composites: no real game or developer is named as a failure. The intake page starts with a symptom check, so you know which files to read first.

Details

• 12-page A4 PDF in English, text selectable and searchable.
• Sources: Steam's refund policy, Steamworks documentation and GameDiscoverCo research.
• Written and illustrated with AI assistance, then fact-checked against the sources named in the book. All images are original renders, original pixel art or CC0 material: no screenshots of commercial games.