What Was The Longest Game You've Made?

[Labyrinthine]

For the length, you could first say how long it would approximately take from a new player, and what's the time for someone who's already played it through at least once.

I can start. My first three games, Labyronia, Labyronia 2 and Legend of Mysteria took all about 10 hours for a newcomer per game. The ones knowing their way could beat them in 5-6 hours. The development time with eventual remaking them took all in all about 5 months per game. I'm sure many of you could build equally long games a lot faster, but these were my first projects, as I was practicing for the main thing, following.

My latest game Labyronia Elements took 90 hours for the first player who made it through without help. Speed running it, I personally managed to beat it in 30 hours. The development took 3 years, although it would've probably taken twice the time if it had been my first game.

The question interests me, because I'm currently advertising Elements as one of the largest RM games out there (60-90 hours of playtime). I wouldn't want to be completely out of charts, if there's like 1000 games with nearly 100 hours of playtime.

 

[TheoAllen]

I played my own game, Skyward Temple, and it took me 2-3 hours while someone reported it could even took 7 hours, I have no idea how

 

[Labyrinthine]

I think the amount of time can easily double or even triple if you don't know the game beforehand. Especially if there are puzzles and sections where you're not sure where to go.

 

[TheoAllen]

Well, there is a lost maze there that left some of my LP'ers frustrated, and it may took long. But I expected the longest duration would be somewhere nearing 6 hours since there is no much contents to explore aside just moving forward. Lots of people also reporting that they finished it within 4-5 hours range

 

[JtheDuelist]

Downfall FES on RPG Maker Fes would take the unskilled about 4-5 hours while a knowledgeable player can clear in under 1.5-2 hours. Counting the new additional content the MV remake, Downfall FES Re:Boot, will have, I suspect the numbers to change to 6-8 hours and 3-5 hours, respectively (Brjóst, the game's toughest secret boss, isn't for the speedrunners- he wants you to suffer and knows how to do it perfectly- percentage attacks, poison, debuffs, devastating basic attacks, you name it! It is his job and passion.). Development time for the first was 3.5 years, due to waiting on RPG Maker Fes's release rather than actually designing.

 

[bgillisp]

6 hours. It was a little 20 level side dungeon crawler that I made to test my battle system. It had quick leveling, very small maps (most maps were the same size as the screen), and visual battles, but the screen was crowded with them until you thinned them down some. But since the point was to test the battle system, I figured this was acceptable (even though it would probably drive players nuts in a real release).

Though I did make a couple modules in Unlimited Adventures that took 15 - 20 hours to complete. Granted, only I and a friend ever tested them. Ever try to distribute something in 1993? Wasn't easy.

Edit:

Here's a video of Level 17 of that project. By that point I was making slightly bigger maps, but not by much. There's many visual glitches (like characters with HP displayed to the tenths, or the (Air Version) by a character name) which I'll fix if I ever decide to release it.

Spoiler

 

[Frogboy]

Both games are pretty small. My first one was a puzzle game so that's fairly difficult to estimate. It can be beaten in a half hour but some players could spend much longer and have trouble beating it at all.

My second game was made for IGMC so was deliberate about setting the play time at around an hour.

I have ideas for games that will be much longer but I need a crap-ton of custom plugins to make some of them so that's what I've been focusing on for a little while now.

 

[Kes]

I wouldn't want to be completely out of charts, if there's like 1000 games with nearly 100 hours of playtime.

I am assuming that you mean commercial games here.
There are some, I can think of 5 off hand - but they are all a few years old. I expect that there are more, but doubt if there are huge numbers. Free games are different, of course.

I don't know anyone making commercial RM games these days who is going in for that sort of length, precisely because of the amount of development time required.

As for the longest game I've made - depends. There is usually a fair amount of optional stuff in my games, so if a player ignores it then they can crack through in half the time. But assuming that the player does all the side quests, then both Tale of a Common Man and A Timely Intervention come in at about 12 hours when I play them and anywhere between 15-20 hours for others. I mention my own playtime because I know of one player who took over 47 hours. To this day I cannot work out why. Individual players have so many personal factors which affect play time - bgillisp, for example, reads astonishingly fast, so dialogue is over in a flash. Others, especially those who do not have English as their first language will take longer. It is, therefore, difficult to come up with something other than a very broad brush figure.

 

[flashbax]

The longest game I've made and finished was my first one back in the day on RPG Maker for the PS1; took about 10-15 hours to complete. around 300+ hours into development since you had to type each word in 1 letter at the time with the controller...ugh!

 

[Matseb2611]

Well, mine certainly won't be among the longest.
Atonement 1 might be considered the longest I've made since it has 2 campaigns, each one around 5 hours long, so 10 hours in total.
Several others: each of the Incitement games, City of Chains, Mercury, Atonement 2, probably Snares of Ruin, and my very old game Dreadmurk - could take anywhere between 4 hours for those going in fast or know what they're doing to around 10 hours for completionists or slower players (some had reported even up to 20 hours or so at some point, can't remember which game though).

Normally, for a game which is about 5-10 hours long, it takes me roughly 6-7 months to develop. But length can depend on so many things. Battles can greatly bloat up a game's length, and then things like alternate story routes based on player choices require more dev time, so then you have to ask - if one playthrough is not enough to experience the whole game and it requires 2 or even 3 playthroughs, then what exactly is the game's length.

 

[MrZalgo]

For me, my current project is planned to have about 70 hours at the most. Because of the dev time, i plan to split it into episodes worth 10 or so hours in total. won't be for a good while til it is finished tho.

 

[Clockwarkgate]

I only released 1 game so far but the longest game that I have made is probably The Night All Angels Cry (unreleased) with almost 3 weeks gameplay.