How much does it cost to make an indie game?
2 min read
By Eduardo Orellana ·
An indie game costs mostly time: the people who make it, for as long as it takes. Estimate it as team size × months × monthly cost per person (including your own living costs, even unpaid), plus outsourced art, audio and translation, software, the $100 Steam fee, and marketing. A solo developer's year can cost little in cash and a lot in income given up; a team of four for two years is a six- or seven-figure budget. There is no reliable public median, so build your own number.
The biggest cost does not appear on an invoice
Most indie budgets are dominated by people's time, and for a solo developer that time is their own, unpaid. That is why "it cost me $500" and "it cost $300,000" can describe similar games: one counted cash, the other counted salaries.
The formula
Team × months × monthly cost per person, plus:
- Outsourced work: art, animation, music, sound, translation, a trailer.
- Tools and services: engine fees if any, software, assets.
- Platform fees: $100 per game on Steam Direct, refunded after $1,000 in revenue.
- Marketing: ads, festivals, PR, events.
- A contingency of 20% or more: games run long.
A worked example
A solo developer, 18 months, living costs of $2,500 a month: $45,000 of time. Plus $6,000 of outsourced art and music, $500 of tools and assets, $100 for Steam, $3,000 of marketing: about $54,600, before contingency. The cash spent might be under $10,000 if the developer lives on savings, but $54,600 is what the game cost.
How to make it cheaper
- Cut scope before anything else: fewer levels, one mode, a shorter game.
- Pick a style that is cheap to make well: 2D over 3D, a limited palette, procedural content.
- Use a free engine and free or licensed assets.
- Ship something small first, to learn what takes time.
Where Flockbay fits
Flockbay is a free AI game builder on the official Godot engine, which is free and open source; its AI works on a daily free allowance or your own Claude or ChatGPT. Its publishing tools are free in beta until 1 December 2026, and it takes no share of sales. This is general information, not financial advice.