I started my game Emberheart 4 years ago with only a little bit of experience in unity. I decided 4 years ago to try UE4 and the project I was making was quickly shaping up into something I could make into a full game. The scope was much bigger than what you state you want in the game. But it also took me 3 years of fulltime development to get where I am now. I am releasing in Early Access in just one week from now!!
So yeah. It is possible. Blueprints is very easy to learn and to program things quickly with! And if you’re a visual thinker like me. You’ll have a much easier time using visual scripting like blueprints compared to real coding in c++ or c#!
I was only able to work for 4 years without income because my parents supported me though. So if you want to do something like that (full time development i mean) than better make sure you already got enough money to continue paying your rent and food for 6 months to a year or make sure your parents support you.
While it is possible, looking at myself with Emberheart and Forests of Augusta, and for example Sanctum Breach which was also a large scope project done by a solo dev in UE4, there might be factors involved that made for the success of myself and the sanctum breach guy.
For example. I crashed heavily right before I started my UE4/Emberheart development. I ended up in the psychic hospital where they examined what was “wrong” with me. They did intelligence tests and tested for things like autism etc. Turned out I am gifted and autistic.
Being gifted, among a high IQ, means you have extreme motivation and perseverance, can think complex, often a visual thinker, are highly senstive (which often goes hand in hand with great Artistic abilities) and others.
While purely gifted people often are smart in many areas, due to my autism I’m more of an “Idiot Savant” meaning I’m only interested in Game development and nothing else. Making my skills in game development even better, cause i don’t do anything else in my life…
You don’t have to be gifted or autistic to be able to do it. Just having the motivation to work 10+ hours a day including weekends and good motivation and perseverance will get you a long way. Hell, with the scope you described, which is only 1/10th the work of what i did with Emberheart, you could go with less hours work per day/week, even do it in your spare time. Just be consistent. Like work a few hours every day, make a habbit out of it.
Hope this gave you some insight. And I hope you’re gonna tackle it, cause being a game developer and able to make a living out of it is great!