How long does it take to make a computer game from scratch?

I believe it takes over 1000 hours if you are working solo and here is my breakdown of why:

700 hours on designing the art for the game

-3d modelling

-sculpting

-animation

300 hours to design the code

I am currently in my first few days of coding and if I am completely honest, it is much easier than I had anticipated from a technical skill point. However creating several variables or 'creating switches' as I like to call it and figuring out the trigonometry has all been a little bit tedious. Then there are several different factors that I haven't really considered for larger games like setting up a server, however these corporations have nearly achieved a monopoly and since having gained a considerably large marketing share have since been laying off several employees with often stagnant progress.

So how did I make the game and could anybody make one?

I started out very simply by watching YouTube videos or how to guides, then I started to create characters and objects, if I am brutally honest the first 100 hours of my effort didn't bare a lot of fruit and I personally don't believe that many of my creations were very quality so I later opted not to use a lot of it. It was a process of going back to the drawing board in many cases as I later went back to redesign a lot of my clearly flawed models with a much broader knowledge and know how. A game as simple as Tetris or chess could be easily designed in under 100 hours.

What software's did I choose?

This is one of if not the biggest reasons why people decide not to make a game is when they see software from Autodesk like 3dmax and Maya and it can cost upwards of $1000 USD to several thousands. Since this was a project of passion I opted to go an almost free route, the only investments I had put into my design was on a Wacomm tablet and Zbrush Core which is like a much less expensive demo version of the real thing which can cost about $1000 USD. I watched a lot of videos in comparing some of the more expensive software's just to see what I was missing out on and I could have ultimately saved several hours on a few different processes. However I ended up using Blender as a free Maya alternative and Gimp as a free photoshop alternative.

What motivation did I have to design a game?

I have personally been working on my little pet project on and off for about four years now. I had since abandoned my project a long time ago for being in the category basket of too hard, yet since being restricted to staying indoors lately it has given me that last push of motivation to chip away.

So... Was it all worth it!?

If I had a real career for the course of that time then I would strongly not recommend that it is worth the time, however I have been playing computer games since I was a small child so really for most of my life, so it was always something of a passion project. I can now understand why a game developer would choose to make a basic 2d phone game that uses simple geometric shapes instead of designing a triple A worthy title, as I believe a lot of mobile phone games could be designed in under 100 hours if they are built around very simplistic design features. I always imagined I would get a job quite easily after I finished my bachelors, however I have found that quite challenging so I don't really see a better use of my time.

What are my next steps?

My next goals are to smooth out the movement and create meaningful goals for the game, I didn't want to create just another game that you feel like you need to dredge for hours to build resources to build something completely arbitrarily. So if someone finishes my boss battle in just one hour and then I plan to design it so you can play with two players on one keyboard so your friend can play as the boss.

I am aiming for a very deep and complicated strategy, more so I want it to be quite challenging and have a high mastery skill. The aim is for a cute-ish little turtle Zippy to defeat a Balrog, to do this the turtle must use many evasive maneuver's and try not to be squashed!