yeah CotA and BoB were also built to experiment with a format (ie telephone as a dev method) or a gameplay idea (ie Thracia mechanics) versus the same sort of motivation that typically precedes a solo work.
It was inherently a decentralized product, versus something like “here’s my hack idea, story, and characters, and now I need help building it.” – the format gave everyone some degree of ownership, which may cause issues with the end product, but does give folks incentive to actually contribute and launch the hack. But even as a lead, you relinquish almost all of the control when building this way. You can’t be picky about the outcome in the way you would be with a solo project.
Art is the easiest part of a hack to change and adjust throughout development, but also requires skill and time to execute well. In general, people won’t sign up to support your idea without having something to play first and also to get a sense of how you work as a developer/lead on a project.
Vision Quest I started by myself and got a lot of help along the way once I had something to show. People don’t want to see their contributions go to waste, and people don’t want to contribute to something that they don’t personally like, so making a demo, even if very rough aesthetically, will help show you’re for real and are committed to making something. I know I would’ve gotten nothing done had I not started myself, and the lion’s share of the work fell to me even when I had people help – it’s the nature of a “solo” project.
In general, I’ve noticed a trend away from “true” group projects where a handful of people focus on different aspects of the same project and instead there are more efforts with a lead who gets ad hoc help from different folks as needed.
This is likely because of how much easier it is to get started now than it was in the times before Builder and Buildfiles, but also because the community’s much more open about sharing. I’ve contributed to many different projects over the years (mostly with playtest feedback on early builds or music) but would be hesitant to call myself part of the “crew/team” for any of them.
That said, my advice would echo Scraiza’s: Start working on it yourself, release scrappy demos, get feedback, iterate, and ask for help when you need it. Visuals can be addressed later and rework is part of the process.
