Okay, So I am Mech Eng graduated last year and working on my first game for steam since last 5-6 months. So I am going to give you my perspective on indie development(In India) and why it sucks. I made first game for play store(first free then made it paid) and used to earned 3k-4k($1.99) but after getting 5 backlogs in one sem(if you get 6 backlogs one year is waste), I took break and started focussing on studies and cleared backlogs and pased eng without drop but because of backlogs and all my pointer become worst Anyways,In that period I made around 2k every month from play store. After final year exam I decided to make one last attempt at game dev before going to higher studies getting job is hard for me because my marks are not good enough to apply for big mnc's and local companies pay 6k-8k pm. Sitting home making game is huge risk well my relatives call me an IDIOT, my parents still support me but I am sure they are already at their limit(after allwhen all my cousins doing so well) When someone ask What I am doing I lies because one of my cousin(married) asked me whether I am making game for terroriest ? Or dont make game like blue whale. Someone also told me that no one is going to marry me or What people will think when they knew (Engg game bana raha hai).

I work daily 14(minm)-16 hours I cut off myself socially dont attend any family functions so after suffering long time things are looking good got enough amount of wishlist on steam(General formula for first week sale is 0.4 to 0.25 * wishlist count, If your game do not get enough sale in first week then steam will stop pushing your game ) also hate you get from player is unbelievable someone downvote your game because your game does not contain female character to choose from etc. Also making good game is really hard. To answer your question join sub like r/gamedev you will get better info about gamedev life but tbh gamedev is definately not cool:(