so since i last posted, ive been on vacation, got super busy with the dayjob and made a game prototype. We’re talking about the prototype. I used the combination of using a trello board and being clear cut/ruthless with what tasks need to be done first.

the goal

i ultimately started this project to have something to upload on my itch.io. It is an embarrassing thought to have when I tell people that I make video games in my spare time and should they ask to see any (no one has yet) the only project on my profile is a janky VR walking simulator. So yeah, I wanted to have something playable and not janky.

limitations

I saw a statistic about how on average (or something like 75%) of games sold on steam only make $4k or 1k in sales. So I extrapolated from that, and used the Pareto Principle where if only 20% of something makes up for the 80%…. I feel like I’m babbling.

Point is, after napkin math (or more precisely a rough spreadsheet), I gave myself about a two week’s time of moonlighting to come up with a prototype that I could ask feedback for and see if that would be something I want to keep going with, and more importantly, not spend months of time on it.

enter… trello

so I’ve used trello boards before, even for gamedev and i really ought to use them more often. this time i used it in a slightly more focused way for myself by categorizing the tasks to a phase of development.

Basically once I entered a new card onto the board I immediately thought about the task and decided if it was a prototype kind of task, a demo kind of task or a final build kinda thing.

This way, if I came back from the weekend not really remembering what needs to be done; I would at least know not to touch the tasks that don’t need to be done until I’m in the ‘demo’ or ‘final build’ phase of the game development.

Not much else to say except it was great not being bogged down by features that would slow me down or really end up not being too important.

got a build

you can check it out here, pretty bare bones if I do say so myself, but all the fundamentals are done and essentially I would just need to build levels and a couple of gadgets that make the player experience more varied.

time to stop moving goalposts

I was able to create a playable prototype within my timeframe! After a bit of time thinking on it, i’ve decided to slowly just keep working on adding levels, not so frantically, like maybe a level draft or two a day until I have a collection of them to edit.

One of the problems I think I had with gamedev is that I would be at the dayjob thinking of making the game I wanted to make. A lot of the times I ended up overcomplicating the ideas or methods for the sake of it. It would be like the goalposts would keep moving to improve the project and I’d end up working on it night after night until burnout.

Anybut I really enjoyed the process of making a small prototype this way. So much so that I’m about to finish another prototype that’s an on-rails shooter for vr. But that’s for the next post-

Until next time!