Hangar — A Bingus Postmortem

I completed Hangar in just six months. Here’s what I learned from the journey.

Some Facts

• Hangar was made in six months.
• It’s the fifth game I’ve ever made.
• It was created with a team of three people covering Programming, Art, and Sound.

The Journey

Hangar began with a game design document (GDD) that outlined the core concepts: types, enemies, locations, and mechanics. Writing this early GDD was a fun and important step — it helped me organize my creative thoughts. But when I started, I had no idea how to actually make a turn-based game.

Hangar started as an RPG and later shifted into a roguelite when I felt it wasn’t engaging enough. One of the hardest parts of development was being honest with myself and receiving feedback. While the feedback was incredibly helpful, there were plenty of moments where I had spent 40+ hours on something only for people not to understand it, or to suggest a change I had already wrestled with.

Fast forward to the initial release on July 20, 2025: about 45 views and 25 browser plays. It may not sound huge, but it was the most traction I’d ever gotten on a game — and it felt unbelievable. In the past, people played my games for maybe 10 minutes and never returned. With Hangar, people were still talking to me about it days later. That early traction inspired me to keep pushing forward.

Around update 0.5.0, Hangar was shown at Indie Dev Night in NYC, where the feedback was glowing. To this day, Hangar has never scored below a 3 out of 5 in “fun factor,” and it consistently received more 5s than 3s. The positive feedback, combined with the knowledge that my effort wasn’t wasted, fueled my motivation to polish it for the next big milestone: PlayNYC. (I wrote a separate post about that event, so I’ll keep this short and encourage you to check it out!)

After PlayNYC, I kept working on Hangar for what was supposed to be three more months. But in the end, I had to ask myself: should I dive deeper, add more features, and risk getting lost in development — or move on? The answer was simple. Hangar had already taught me so much. If I finished it and started something new, I would only learn more. If Hangar gains traction in the future, I can always return to it. If not, I still have an amazing proof of concept that I’m proud of.

At the end of my journey, Hangar sits at just over 600 views and 300 browser plays on itch.io — with the potential for even more once it launches on platforms with larger audiences. While itch.io isn’t always the best place to get broad visibility, it’s an incredibly easy and reliable way to deploy and share a game.

What’s Next?

Hangar will be uploaded to a few more websites (CrazyGames and CoolmathGames) and will always remain playable on itch.io. I’ll continue fixing bugs as they come in and monitoring its progress.

Meanwhile, I’m shifting geirrs (haha) into a more laid-back project called ShelfCare — a mobile game inspired by self-care apps, where you take care of and trade plants. My wife creates houseplant content on YouTube, so we’ll be collaborating on this as a fun intermission project between larger games.

I can’t say thank you enough. Hangar was a wild success for a self-taught developer’s fifth project, and I learned so many valuable skills from it. Everyone’s feedback, playtesting, and support means more than I can express. I have a passion for making games, and I’ll keep at it for as long as I can.

You can play Hangar on itch.io or on my games page. The best way to support my journey is to share my Linktree or this website with friends and family — and help spread the word about Bingus Productions!

Look forward to blog posts and updates on ShelfCare and if you want to play the early demo it can be accessed on my itch.io The people I met on the journey, the knowledge I gained, and the goals I reached... Thank you for everything and thank you for reading.