Left Alive: A Reminder About Game Dev Realities

Content originally posted to Instagram on November 26, 2020. I chose that day because it was Thanksgiving in the U.S., and I wanted to touch upon the topic of "thanks." Post featured a variety of character art from the game Left Alive by Yoji Shinkawa (best known for his work on the Metal Gear series, and more recently Death Stranding). I'm pretty sure the "chibi" artwork is by Shinkawa as well.

Left Alive is a spin-off of Square Enix’s Front Mission franchise, which is best known for its take on the tactical-RPG genre and stories featuring geo-political conflict and mecha warfare. I’ve never played a Front Mission game, but as someone who’s been familiar with the franchise, I thought Left Alive’s genre-shift to stealth action (like Metal Gear) seemed interesting enough based on the premise (characters trying to survive amidst war and giant robots towering over them). I get why long-time Front Mission fans might’ve been disappointed, but the game sounded like it could attract some new eyes to it too.

…turns out the game didn’t do very well. From what I recall, a lot of reviewers complained about how the game’s mechanics weren’t balanced or refined enough, along with how it was flawed on a technical level.

Developers obviously never set out to make an unenjoyable game, but thinking about cases like Left Alive has made me realize how lucky we are to even get games we call “good”. A game can have so much going for it like a major publisher’s backing, a big-name artist’s involvement, and (most importantly) the efforts of hard-working staff. But anything can go wrong at anytime during its creation.

So regardless of whether a game ends up being “good”, “bad”, or even actually finished, I give my thanks to all the devs working hard out there while weathering the challenges that arise when making a game.