My first ever game and the beginning of my journey

This certainly feels like quite a milestone for me as a game designer. I originally started creating a variety of board game designs 3 years ago and have always been wanting to get into developing videogames for the longest time. And I have to tell you it's a long and arduous journey to get from 0 to game designer on your own. But it's worth it if you've set your heart on the games industry like I have.

I wasn't initally quite sure what to make as my first post on itch.io, but I decided to document my journey. Perhaps it will be helpful to someone in the future, or to myself whenever I look back at the simple games that I made 20 years from now.

The inspiration:

Ever since I was little I've been incredibly attracted to video games as art, as a learning experience, as a soft respite from everyday life. Games like Final Fantasy X, Dark Souls, Klonoa, The Witcher 3, Guilty Gear and MegaMan clearly demonstrate their team's creative vision and goal. I could list an endless number titles that taught me a lot and helped me to become the person I am today, but I won't go that far in this post.

The beginning:

Like a lot of stories (I'm looking at you Spiderman), it all started at high school. Ever heard of the magical world known as Dungeons and Dragons? The incredibly well built systems allowed me to emerse myself in an evolving Roleplay experience as a player. Having enjoyed the fantasy of the gameplay and how modular it was I decided to take up the role as a Dungeon Master, creating  stories, encounters, new systems, all taking inspiration from the current popular media. My goal was and will always the same. To create unique and relatable experiences for the players.

Since then I've been a Dungeon Master for several different campaigns using 3 different fantastical worlds of my own creation. My favourite part about being a Dungeon Master is seeing how the players affect the worlds they explore. I had found that using the exact same world and planned story line with different players can change the experience entirely, spawning completely new possibilities and outcomes. As a player the feeling of being able to have an effect on this fantasy world you've entered is euphoric. And as a game designer I wish to create this feeling for the players of my games, but first I take the first steps on my journey to learning  how to delelop video games for PC, Mobile and consoles.

With my specific knowledge in Music Techology,  a strong mathematically oriented problem solving mind and enthusiasm for creating compelling stories, I had high confidence going forth on this epic journey to becoming a game designer.

The journey:

Though the majority of my journey wasn't a straight line from point A to B, I knew what I had to do to get started developing video games after some research.

I initially started out creating board games. To date I've made 6 different board games and have tested them all vigorously with high praise and reviews from friends. This is how I acclimated to the iterative process of game design, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Before going in to testing I had specific points of contention about my games that I focussed on addressing, which after playtesting became apparent and obvious why things hadn't worked as intended or didn't feel right for the players. It was this iterative process of designing board games that I would find mimicked all over my journey. 

So far I've learnt simple coding in both C# and C++ specifically using an incredible website known as CodeCademy.  Fortunately I took a higher level class in  C++ at university which helped significantly in learning C#. There have been some other websites that I've learnt from for a more intermediate level, but none of note in comparison to the new one that I've been almost addicted to.

It's a little website known as Codewars. In that website, you choose your level and solve programming problems at that level. I can't overstate what an amazing resource this is for a practical learner like myself. If ever I have a pocket of free time, I'd be solving a programming problem or two on that website.

The rhythm of coding, debugging and re-testing code that I had created became well ingrained to me at that point.

Now equipped with programming languages I took to the vast quantities of Unity tutorials. And that's when I made my first game. It was difficult to find where to truly start when learning Unity. Coding in Unity was quite foreign at first in comparison to straight solving problems on Codewars. I personally feel like my introduction to coding in Unity was quite flawed. Even so, I had learnt the way I was progressing was not efficient for me and so I took to paid courses.

At this point I made Flappy Dragon by myself, without the help of too many tutorials. I created every single C# script from the ground up, no shortcuts. Though the game appears simple, it was a whirlwind of problem solving and syntax searching. I made sure that I could explain every line of code and uploaded it to itch.io for anyone who would want to try it out and to get used to the building and uploading process from Unity.

I recently found several incredible tools that I will be having thorough look through that include their own scripts and prefabs that I can use to create my own games without having to create too much code from scratch. Most notably are the free assets in the Unity Asset Store known as "Standard Assets", "3D Game-kit", and "2D Game-kit". I'll be making good use of these resources from now on to reach my goal.

The goal:

To continue to improve my skills on Unity and UnrealEngine and become a game designer that pushes the state of game genres to new limits. I'll probably talk more about my opinions on the current state of gaming in another post.

The plan:

Originally I had planned on creating 5 games on Unity and 5 games on UnrealEngine by the end of April so that I would have plenty of time to apply to jobs and prepare myself for interviews while I live in Japan. However I quickly found that goal to be somewhat unrealistic while also working a full-time job and having some semblance of a social life. And so I instead hope to finish 3 games on Unity by the end of April and 3 gaes on UnrealEngine by the end of July. The goal of these games is not to be passion projects with incredibly innovative design, but to help me learn the engines and programming languages. Fortunately most companies have taken to remotely, it's ironic but I feel like now is the best time to be applying to work for companies abroad.

I'm sure I've missed some small chuncks of my story here, but those can be told another time.

I'll continue making posts like this as I progress and upload screenshots during development of the games I plan to make.

If you read through the whole post, first of all thank you and secondly please look forward to more posts about my journey. I would appreciate any tips or insight into getting into game design in the comments below.