I'm going to admit right now I'm quite late in writing this blog.. I have completed all aspects of my game-in-development bar the level design, of which I have 40 levels worth of work remaining.
However, I figure the age old adage of being letter late than never is appropriate to use here, and so I figure I should share my game development experiences with you all.. Who knows, maybe sharing my experiences will further motivate me to imagine and create?
The main snippet I wanted to share today is that I'm tired of procrastinating.. I am sick of not working on my game because I know I want to. But being in holiday mode has, for some reason, lowered my efficiency in getting work done.
I was speaking with another game developer recently who said he often attained much-needed inspiration to work on his game by having people play it. Of course, I've had some help from friends and family. But it seems like a positive relationship with said people stops them from being blunt and honest. (or maybe my game is perfect.. ha!)
So.. would anybody help me out?
First, a little about my game..
It's a puzzle title designed for iOS. It will be released for free download and sale on iPhone pretty much as soon as it's done, with an iPad version to follow soon after.
Players need to progress from the start to the finish, and clear every single tile on the board to win.
That's all I can really say to be honest, it's a pretty simple concept, but I think you need to play it to realise how deep it can be, too.
There's been some considerable challenge in developing this, as it's my first full-blown game. (I have made a few other games but put little effort into polishing them or making them enjoyable):
• Programming continues to offer some challenge as I learn to be more fluent. It's not necessarily hard to do, but it can be interesting to attempt to apply code in unique ways in order to achieve a certain effect.
• Art. I am quite possibly one of the worst in the world when it comes to art -- both traditional and digital. In this game, every single graphic is produced by programming. A positive side effect of this is that file size also drops.
• Level design. This has by far been the most challenging aspect of developing my game. Solving puzzles is nothing compared to creating them. Thinking about how to trick gamers is most difficult. It's also hard to tell if the difficulty of my puzzles is appropriate -- having created the puzzles makes it hard to gauge exactly how hard they are to beat.
So, this is where you guys come in. If you would be interested in helping, I'd love some feedback on the difficulty curve of what I have so far
:)
If this is you, or you have any questions to ask about the development process, please feel free to drop a comment below!
:)