10 Incredible Video Games Made By A SINGLE Person

Dean Dodrill is a self-taught animator and illustrator who worked on video games before taking on the task of creating his own. Before setting his sights on Dust: An Elysian Tale, Dodrill provided artwork and cinematics for Jazz Jackrabbit 2. When he set out to create Dust, he thought it would take a few months.

By the time he finished his project, he had put three-and-a-half years into its development. Originally, Dust was meant to look like an 8-bit platformer akin to NES titles like Castlevania and Metroid but evolved into a more graphically robust action role-playing game in the Metroidvania-style.

When development was completed, Dodrill intended to push it onto the Xbox 360 Indie Games Channel, but a win in 2009 of the Microsoft Dream.Build.Play Challenge earned the title a full release on Xbox Live Arcade in 2012.

The game was well-received and released on multiple platforms. After two years on the market, the game succeeded in selling more than a million copies across all platforms. It holds a rating of 83/100 on Metacritic, and there has been talk of a sequel possibly going into development sometime in the future.