Post
The silent killer of indie projects: just one more feature, and then one more, and then...
Scope creep is what happens when a developer keeps adding features, systems, and content beyond the original plan without adjusting timelines or resources. It is the number one reason indie games never ship. What starts as a simple roguelike suddenly needs crafting, base building, multiplayer, and a procedurally generated open world. The dev gets buried under technical debt and feature complexity, burns out, and the project dies in a graveyard of half-finished builds on a hard drive somewhere.
Example
Yandere Simulator has been in development since 2014 with constantly expanding scope, becoming a cautionary tale the indie community frequently references when discussing feature creep and project management.
Why it matters
Learning to cut features is just as important as building them. The graveyard of abandoned indie projects is enormous, and scope creep filled most of those graves. Ship small, ship finished.
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