Quote Originally Posted by czar View Post
You can make commercially successful games without spending massive of amounts of money. Take Angry Birds, written in LUA. The hard part coming up with a brilliant idea and pulling it off with style.
I would also add that having a talented artist in your pocket doesn't hurt either. Nice looking assets can make all the difference from looking amateurish to professional or even stylistically cleaver. Minecraft might not have as much oomph in the 3D graphics department, but you still need someone with at least an ounce of visual talent to make the game look decent and complete all things need done.

From my experience I've noticed a huge difference in my own projects when I had a talented person who is committed to my graphics needs versus trying to create things myself or using programmer art or even friends and colleagues who don't exactly have a nack for professionally looking artwork. Garland's Quest as a direct example will be able to make a good run for it's cost on stores like Apple's App Stores and Steam thanks to the extra visual oomph that hiring a professional artist has given it.

Not that you have to hire a professional artist, but if you don't have a "committed" person with this talent in your group, you may need to shop around for one. ...and get a commitment!

This bares nothing for the language it's self as it's a common rule for an indie developer of ANY language. It's just good practice if you want to get serious with Pascal game development and want to have a good run of it. ...same is said of any language though.

I do however love seeing all the commercial games coming out from Big Fish games that stretch multiple platforms, especially iOS which proves it's being kept current by those making tools and libraries for it.

Cezar is a notable contributor to this cause. I hope to follow within a year or so with one of my own titles myself... finally!