You guys really love hard games, or at least, you love whichever game you remember as the hardest. In my latest survey, I asked respondents to rank the hardest game they've played on a scale of 1-10. Over 40% scored their most challenging experience a 10, and 70% scored it an 8 or higher.

You also love a lot of different hard games, and have different ideas about what makes a game 'hard.' Among 2,660 respondents, the top game cited as the hardest they've ever played was only mentioned 385 times—around 14% of the total. (Actually, one person wrote in SEGA Bass Fishing 1,006 times, but I've cut that from the results, along with several variations of "your mom.")

What's the hardest PC game you've played?

Unsurprisingly, Dark Souls got the most mentions, with 14% saying it was the hardest game they've ever played. It was followed by Dark Souls 2, which took in about 5% of the results. From there, though, the results are immediately diverse, with shooters, platformers, puzzle games, strategy games, and MOBAs all bunched together. When I cut out jokes, console games, games with specific caveats, and those that received only one or two mentions, I was still left with over 70 games. (Here's my curated list of the top 77.)

The top 10, naturally, are the most popular hard games—and games that are arguably best known for being hard—so the results actually get more interesting the deeper into the list I go. At number 11, for instance, you'll find I Wanna Be The Boshy, a fan game based on number six, I Wanna Be The Guy, an intentionally difficult tribute to early platformers.

Further down (and I'm skipping around a bit), we find StarCraft II, STALKER, Insurgency, Alien Isolation, Kerbal Space Program, the Touhou series, VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, SpaceChem, Dustforce, Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and, of course, Bad Rats, a notoriously awful game which has accrued a positive rating on Steam, because ironic Steam reviews are all the rage.

It's good to see the Touhou Project's bullet-hell games earn some mentions. We recently published an introduction to the series, which is currently being localized by Playism.

VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, Dustforce, and SpaceChem all come recommended (I don't think I ever made it past Vogarr's first stage, though). I did expect to see a few more puzzle games. One game no one mentioned, I presume because it's newer and a bit more niche, is TIS-100. It's made by the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, and might be one of the most challenging puzzle games I've played (though it's presumably easier for experienced programmers, and anyone who paid more attention in school than I did). Print out the manual if you can.

Choosing difficulty

All of the games I mentioned up there can easily be described as 'hard,' if for different reasons. Against skilled opponents, CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and StarCraft 2 are very hard, and they're complex. Dwarf Fortress and Kerbal Space Program require a lot of learning. Super Hexagon, and the bullet-hell games and platformers, require precision control.

But plenty of games which aren't known for being hard can be very hard. The Witcher 2, for instance, came in at 19, in part due to its permadeath mode and first boss. Those damn RC missions from GTA: San Andreas also came up. Civilization V on Diety difficulty, too.

In the survey, I asked which difficulty setting (based on four generic settings) the takers were most likely to choose when starting a new game. The distribution is about as I expected: almost no one takes the easy route, the most people (39.8%) leave it on the normal difficulty, and slightly fewer choose the hard (28.7%) or the hardest modes (26%).

Broken mice and broken bones

When asked to tell us the worst thing they've done to express frustration with a game, plenty said that they don't react physically—they curse, uninstall the game, go outside, or do other healthy-sounding things. "[I] stopped playing for few months to get over my anger and hopefully renew my interest," said King_Matt. A calm and wise king is Matt. We can all learn from the great King_Matt.

And apparently, a lot of us need to. The word "broke" came up 222 times and "smash" was included in over 100 responses. Banana peels came up an awful lot, too. Here are a few examples:

I chucked my keyboard at my brick wall. It dragged the desktop with it. It corrupted my hard drive, broke my keyboard and most functions on the case didn't work properly. - Abernath

Thrown a banana peel out the window. But I picked it up later. - Kenu

I once got so frustrated while just trying to get fuel up to my ship [in Kerbal Space Program] that was trying to get to Mun that I decided to fly all my rockets into Kerbol (the sun). I spent about 5 hours just designing the booster/fuel ships to help get my whole fleet there and give them the last push into its blinding embrace. Once every single one was burned to ash, and all the crew with it, I deleted the save and went to bed. It was only after I woke up that I realized what I had done. To say the least, I cried. - Nerd__Guy

 Threw my lamp out the window. It was a damn good lamp too. - Anonymous

Literally ripped out a chunk of hair in frustration once. - Nate Dogg

I actually broke my grandfather's trackball mouse while playing when I was a kid on his PC. I had to buy him a new mouse from Walmart. - Brain

Threw more money at it. This is a recurring theme with me in multiplayer games. - Ryan Daniels

In my grandest fit of frustration, I suppressed my volatile feelings with the warm, cheesy comfort of Hot Pockets. A lot of them. It turns out one man can eat a lot of Hot Pockets. They come out a lot faster than they go in. - Chudbunkis

Threw a banana peel at the screen. - As7iX

Broke a finger. - Dodie

So is Dark Souls really that hard?

I predicted that Dark Souls would be the most popular game in the survey, so I added an extra question. I asked everyone, regardless of which game they put down as the hardest, to agree or disagree with the statement "Dark Souls isn't even that hard, ugh." I think we can all agree that I chose an extremely unscientific way to phrase the question, but we definitely can't all agree on whether or not Dark Souls is hard. 

Zachary Barth's Infiniminer was Minecraft before Minecraft was Minecraft, kickstarting the whole cubey, block-digging genre that has made other people lots of money over the years. He's been sticking to 2D art for more recent games such as SpaceChem and Ironclad Tactics, but now he's borrowing the 'Infini' prefix and returning to 3D for the very-difficult-to-type Infinifactory. Infinifactory. I'm pretty sure I spelled it right that time. Infinifactory (sob) is "like SpaceChem...but in 3D", in the words of Zachtronic Industries.

Coming to Steam Early Access later this year, Infinifactory will let you "build factories that assemble products for your alien overlords", the challenge being "not to die in the process". I.e. the same challenge I face making a cup of a tea. You'll design and run factories from a first-person perspective, complete a story campaign featuring over 30 puzzles (and also audio logs, interestingly), and compare your solutions with those of your chums, presuming they are also playing Infinifactory. A sandbox mode is included too, along with Steam Workshop support.

If you're a fan of Spacechem—like we are—you'll want to keep an eye on Infinifactory, two eyes when you can spare them. Here's our review of the game that will now be known as "Infinifactory...but in 2D".

This article originally appeared in issue 246 of PC Gamer UK.

You might have heard that “It’s never been easier to make a game.” And it’s true. But how do you actually make one? What do you make it ‘in’? How much does it cost? How long does it take? Can you sell what you make, and do you owe anyone any royalties? Do you need to learn a programming language?

I don’t know, but I do know a lot of indie games. And lots of them are made with tools and suites that claim to be beginner friendly. So for each of the most popular tools, I found an indie developer who had made something cool with it, and asked them what it’s like to work with.

I’ll also cover how much these tools cost, what your rights are when it comes to selling your work, and what platforms they can make games for. If you’ve ever been interested in making a game, hopefully this will give you an idea of how long it takes to pick up, which tool will suit you, and where to start.



Unity

What is it? An all-inclusive development suite for making 3D games.

Price and licence: The free version has all you’ll need as a beginner, and is fine to use commercially unless you’re making more than $100,000 a year from your games. The pro version has fancy things like pathfinding, physics, and graphics tricks, and costs £924. No royalties for either version.

Makes games for: PC, Mac and Linux. iOS and Android versions are £246 each.

Tutorial: Infinite Ammo's Unity tutorial



AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – For the Awesome
 
Developers: Ichiro Lambe (Dejobaan Games) and Alex Schwartz (Owlchemy Labs - Unity Version)

How long does Unity take to learn?

Ichiro: Beginners often adapt and reframe what they’re thinking about to fit what’s readily available to them – they’ll learn how to code through tutorials. The ability to create something playable becomes less “Do I know enough to create something or don’t I?” And more “I don’t know what everything does, but I know enough to screw with Euclidean space...”

What that gives us is the ability to become creative in a matter of weeks!

What prior knowledge or skills are helpful?

Ichiro: Knowledge of another 3D engine, Solid C# (or C++, etc) skills, vector algebra.

What can’t you do with it?

Alex: Honestly, we haven’t hit development walls that prevented us from fulfilling our creative goals, and anything that annoys us is usually just a minor editor idiosyncrasy.

How long did you think the game would take to make, and how long did it actually take?

Alex: We estimated around six months, with only two full-time developers on Owlchemy Labs’ end and one to three part-timers on Dejobaan’s end. It ended up being closer to eight-and-a-half months.

How much of the development time was enjoyable, and how much was unpleasant?

Alex: Thankfully the work within Unity was mostly pleasant. The most unpleasant part of the development of the game involved bringing in 3D Game Studio’s proprietary asset formats where a source asset was not available, but that was solved early on in development.



How much did it cost you to develop, and what did that money go on?

Ichiro: Most of the project was done via revenue share, so development/marketing costs were well under $20k.

How well has your game done for you financially, on a scale from 1-10? (Let’s say 5 is ‘enough to make your next game’.)

Ichiro: Time will tell. Most of our revenue comes about over the course of two years after the initial push (when we do bundles and Steam sales and so forth). The original Aaaaa! was doing pretty well, until we added it to the Portal 2 Potato ARG. That dialled things up to 11.

If you could give your past self one piece of advice before starting to make the game, what would it be?

Ichiro: Add in one more killer mechanic that pervades the entire game and gets fans of the original to pick up the semi-sequel.

Conclusion

Unity is the best combination of approachable and versatile for 3D games. It’s more complex than Game Maker, but about as easy as it gets for 3D development. The free version is very generous, and the recent addition of Linux support makes it one of the only noob-friendly tools that can make games for all three desktop operating systems.

Continue for: Adventure Game Studio, RPG Maker, Game Maker and Unreal Development Kit.





Adventure Game Studio

What is it? An all-inclusive development suite for making 2D adventure games.

Price and licence: Free, you can sell your work, no royalties.

Makes games for: PC

Tutorial: Official AGS tutorial



Ben There Dan That

Developer: Dan Marshall

How long does Adventure Game Studio take to learn?

AGS abstracts quite a lot of the complicated stuff for you and it all just works. You can pretty much make the bare bones of something simple in a weekend with a lot of perseverance and very little programming knowledge, because it’s largely just filling in forms and ticking checkboxes.

What prior knowledge or skills are helpful?

If you want to do anything exciting or interesting with the game, you’re going to have to learn some C.

What can’t you do with it?

Lots, I’m afraid. AGS is great for making faux-1990s point-and-click games, but nothing else. It’s also Windows only, so no iPad or Linux versions.
AGS is also kind of getting on a bit, now. You could probably make an AGS-equivalent in Unity in about a week, and get all the multi-platform benefits and visual boost with it.



How long did you think the game would take to make, and how long did it actually take?

I think it probably took about as long as I’d expected it would, a couple of months. But then, Ben There, Dan That! has a deliberately... uh, slapdash style.

How much of the development time was enjoyable, and how much was unpleasant?

Ben There, Dan That! was pretty much a laugh from start to finish, largely because I wasn’t taking it seriously. Maybe the only unpleasant bit was writing all the dialogue – there’s a unique reaction for most things in the game, and so sitting there churning out dialogue did start to become something of a chore.

How much did it cost you to develop, and what did that money go on?

Uh... I don’t think I spent anything.

How well has it done for you financially, on a scale from 1-10?

Ooh, tricky. On its own, probably a 3 or a 4. As a Double Pack with the sequel on Steam, definitely a 9. I could always use more money.

If you could give your past self one piece of advice before starting to make the game, what would it be?

HEY! IDIOT DAN FROM THE PAST. Make the graphics nice!

Conclusion

Adventure Game Studio is perfect if the cool thing about the game in your head is its story, characters or humour. If you want to make all- new game mechanics, you’re better off with Game Maker. But if you’re a writer or artist and you want to tell a story with as little coding work as possible, this is where to start.

Continue for: RPG Maker, Game Maker and Unreal Development Kit. Go back for Unity.





RPG Maker

What is it? An all-inclusive development suite primarily for making 2D RPGs. Includes some graphics sets to get you started.

Price and licence: £18 for the older version, £55 for the latest. You can sell what you make, no royalties. 30-day trial available.

Makes games for: PC

Tutorial: RPG Maker Web's tutorial



To the Moon

Developer: Kan Gao (Director/Designer)

How long does RPG Maker take to learn?

Anyone could just sit down and get a character sprite to run around on a map with a basic battle system, but I think a few months to get the basic technical aspects down. To create your own systems and mechanics involves programming logic just like any language.

What prior knowledge or skills are helpful?

On the technical side, programming experience (the engine uses a scripting system based on Ruby) and a general grasp of logic.

Otherwise, every creative skill comes in handy – the engine actually has a rather active community, which is exciting because it also means that there’s a lot of bartering for resources going on. It’s like Burning Man, but with less sand.

What can’t you do with it?

As far as 2D stuff goes, there’s actually not much of a limitation as far as the program’s capability is concerned. You can operate on the entire engine and create a shoot-em-up like U.S.G.. The main technical restriction for me right now is the inability to port to Apple Mac and Linux, but that might change.



How long did you think the game would take to make, and how long did it actually take?

21 months. We started in February 2010, and it was released on November 1st, 2011. But its initial ‘expected’ release date was April 2010.

How much of the development time was enjoyable, and how much was unpleasant?

It wasn’t all prancing around a meadow, but I did purr a lot. A large positive factor was the variety of tasks to break down the monotony of the ‘work’. The unpleasant part was mainly personal rather than work-related. But still, making the game was definitely an 87.3% enjoyable experience.

If you could give your past self one piece of advice before starting to make the game, what would it be?

Plan out the progress in small segments, then spread them out over twice the time so you can actually follow it sustainably. Also, tomorrow’s winning lottery number is 08 21 59 37.

Conclusion

RPG Maker is very well suited to a very particular kind of game: Japanese-style RPGs with turn-based combat and top-down exploration. You can certainly stray from that template, as To the Moon does, but the further away from it you go, the more sense it makes to use Game Maker instead.

Continue for: Game Maker and Unreal Development Kit. Go back for Unity and Adventure Game Studio.





GameMaker

What is it? An all-inclusive development suite for 2D games. You can either create rules with a drag-and-drop interface, or write code in its scripting language, GML.

Price and licence: The limited version is free, basic version is £30, a version for teams is £60. You can sell the games you make with any of them, no royalties.

Makes games for: PC and Mac. iOS and Android versions are £120 extra each, HTML5 is £60.

Tutorial: TIG forums tutorials



Spelunky

Developer: Derek Yu

How long does Game Maker take to learn?

It shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks. It’s very intuitive and there is a wealth of tutorials and scripts for it.

What prior knowledge or skills are helpful?

Some programming knowledge and familiarity with C-based languages would help you take advantage of the scripting language. Some skill with pixel art couldn’t hurt!

What can’t you do with it?

Game Maker 8.1 (the version I’m using) is too slow to handle modern graphics and audio. It is strictly for games that look like they came from the ’90s or earlier. But I don’t know if that’s still true of Game Maker Studio, the latest incarnation of GM.



How long did Spelunky take to make?

Spelunky took me about a year of on-and-off work to finish, which is maybe double what I guessed when I started working. But I also didn’t anticipate that the game would get as popular as it did.

How much of the development time was enjoyable?

I’d say it was 90% enjoyable and Game Maker played a big part in that. Given how easy it is to use, you can spend most of your time doing art and design!

How much did it cost you to develop?

I don’t think I spent any money on the original Spelunky, aside from the £12 registration fee for Game Maker (£30 these days).

If you could give your past self one piece of advice before starting to make the game, what would it be?

I’d be afraid of messing with my past self too much, since things turned out well and I attribute part of that to my naiveté. Maybe I’d just send myself a cookie!

Conclusion

Game Maker is one of the easiest tools to use for an absolute beginner, and it’s flexible enough to make almost any 2D game you can think of. The only reason not to use it is if you want to make something in 3D, or you’re planning an adventure game or J-RPG. There are better options specifically for those.

Continue for: Unreal Development Kit. Go back for Unity, Adventure Game Studio and RPG Maker





Unreal Development Kit

What is it? An all-inclusive development suite for making 3D games in the Unreal Engine 3.

Price and licence: £60, no royalties on your first $50,000 in revenue, 25% royalty afterwards. Free for non-commercial use.

Makes games for: Almost everything – PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Flash (web), WiiU, PS Vita.

Tutorial: Epic Games official tutorial



Waves

Developer: Rob Hale

How long does UDK take to learn?

It’s tricky because you’re always building on top of how Epic like to structure games. That learning process will continue for years, but you can make something simple very quickly, maybe within just a couple of hours, and be relatively competent in a few weeks.

What prior knowledge or skills are helpful?

Any previous programming experience is very helpful, but be prepared to swallow your pride and do things the ‘Unreal Way’.

What can’t you do with it? Anything that involves changing terrain in real time. Voxel worlds like Minecraft.

How long did you think the game would take to make, and how long did it actually take?

If you asked me during development how long I had left I would always say “A couple of months.” Ultimately I worked on Waves for about nine months in total, but I wasn’t doing 40 hour weeks or anything.

How much of the development time was enjoyable?

There were a few times when working on the game was a chore, specifically getting the user interface and menus done. I will say that if you don’t enjoy solving problems and being faced with mysteries on a daily basis, then don’t get into games development.



How much did it cost you to develop, and what did that money go on?

Living expenses and music. I had about £6k saved up when I quit my job and went full time and I spent every penny of that finishing the game. UDK has an upfront fee of £60 but you don’t need to pay anything until you’re ready to release.

How well has it done for you financially, on a scale from 1-10?

I’d rate it as a 6. I can afford to make another game and I even have a little bit extra so I can pay some freelancers, but if I don’t get another game released inside of a year then I’ll be in trouble.

If you could give your past self one piece of advice before starting to make the game, what would it be?

Don’t call it Waves! Nobody remembers the name and you can’t find it on Google.

Conclusion

UDK is the thing to learn if you ultimately want to be making big, shiny, multi-platform games. It’s harder to learn than Unity, and you’ll need to be very versatile or form a team to make something that looks good. But it’s also great experience if you want to join an established developer, since Unreal 3 is the most commonly used engine in mainstream games.

Go back for Unity, Adventure Game Studio, RPG Maker and Game Maker

2009’s SEO-challenging AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!-- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity was basically the bits from Mirror’s Edge where you miss-time a jump and fall to your death turned into a whole game. If you missed it the first time round it’s now been re-released as a “semi-sequel” titled AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome. It features all 82 levels from the original game, as well as 43 new ones and a “new lighting system and fancy shader effects.” It’s currently on Steam for just £3.49/$4.99, too.