Writing A Game

It's been two months since I decided to develop a game. I am writing a 2D "puzzle game featuring extra-terrestrial invasion of the earth and monsters, who try to save the key landmarks. The game is coming up quite promising. I have decided to start recording the progress of my voyage.

I have been designing and writing code for over a decade now. Always for someone else, for a corporation, individual, freelance, but never for myself. The time has come to make something, that I will be able to call my own.

SmashET App Splash Screen

Smash ET is a name I have selected for this new game. The title was meant to be word play as well as the actual game theme. The game focuses on player controlling a trampoline which sends monsters into the air to eliminate alien space ships. I have decided to make all elements 2D, clean and simple, no shadowing and detailed drawing. The game also will use AI to control the difficulty of gameplay level by level.

That's it for the game, or I risk unfolding all features in my very first post.

When I started, I have never completed such project. I must admit, I love structure, therefore I decided to follow Agile and scrum practice. Although instead of two weeks sprints, which are ever so popular with scrum, I decided to make my sprints a daily one.

The daily sprints enable me to complete small tasks often, rather than trying to hit big milestone every two weeks. I need to focus on every aspect of the game development, such programming

music, level design, character design etc. Although I loved every fricking minute of the development

so far, it is a lonely place working alone. You spend countless hours in front of computer screen. So, there is no one to keep you accountable for timelines and productivity. One tends to procrastinate a lot. Sometimes it’s very difficult to keep yourself motivated. I am a father to three beautiful children, and this keeps me occupied a lot and allows an easy procrastination “I must spend some time with kids,” I’d keep telling myself.  No, my aim is not to abandon my family, I am developing my game, so my kids will be able to say in the future, “my dad was able to do it all alone,” and be proud of me. I find myself, sometimes stuck with problem and no one to bounce ideas off. That is probably con of working alone. Thank you internet and blogs. I reached out a lot. I mean, a lot!

As I do different tasks daily, it helps to my mind off the problem for few days and then come back to it. It does help to take your mind off for some time, clear your mind, before tackling a bug for example.

I am now 5% into the game design and have few months left much of the engine ready now as well as the graphics. I aim to have the game released 28^th September 2018. It’s a behemoth of a task to complete the game in such short time, yet the development will not finish there. The game will have heavy upgrades every month for a year.

I am looking forward to sharing my experience with developing a game and starting a game development studio.

Thanks for reading and your precious time.

Stay up to date on smashET website