I Want To Make A Game

After finishing a Game Development and Design course, I am ready to make some games of my own! I thought it would be interesting for you all to be able to read about my process – how I approach a project like this, where do I take inspiration from… and to get updates throughout the process until the very end result (if I will succeed and not surrender in a few months).

I truly feel passionate about making games, and I would love to take you with me on my journey – learning, thinking creatively, coding, art, and more!

The Idea

I cannot begin coding and “go with the flow” without a clear understanding. This project needs to be something exceptional, an idea that is compelling enough to captivate me for months – perhaps even years, considering my limited free time due to my full-time job.

After searching for inspiration for way too long, trying my luck with a silly idea about a lost cat trying to find its way home, I finally remembered a story that I had in my head for years. Something that I was writing about, dreaming about making it into an animated series, but making it into a game is even better!

The story is about a girl who accidentally finds a portal to a parallel universe. While trying to get back home, in search of another portal, she finds herself in a different parallel universe, and so on, and so on.

I loved daydreaming about these parallel worlds, being of the shows that I liked – Doctor Who, or Avatar (the last airbender, not the blue ones). So, I would take inspiration from those worlds that I liked in different shows or books and apply them to my parallel universes.

Nice story, but how is this going to be a game?

I am currently obsessed with Stardew Valley. I love the pixel art style, love the mechanics, and love the freedom to do whatever I want or complete quests and discover more parts of the game.

I want my game to be something like this. The player is introduced to a world in which they can build up their skills, make a home out of this place, and at whatever point they choose, they can focus on finding the next portal to get closer to home and to the ending of the game. Or maybe there will be no ending, just like in Stardew. But I do have a big last quest in mind, a saving the world-style of quest.

This is a lot… Let’s plan this out!

For now, I’ll just focus on the programming aspect, not the art or sound design or anything else. Basic mechanics essentially. Basically, I need to remake Stardew Valley.

I will use the Unity Engine for the game and, of course, make it 2D (after my failed attempt at a lost cat game in 3D that I mentioned earlier).

I want to have a character that moves around, picks up stuff or interacts with them, and talks to NPCs. Different kinds of interactions are a whole topic on their own, but for now, I’ll focus on the most basic interaction mechanics. You click and something happens.

After the character is ready, I need to build the world, camera movement, a mini-map, NPCs that are walking around, doing stuff. This is where the story will start to build up. I also want to have cutscenes and dialogs, start building all those different interactable objects (I don’t know what interactions I want yet, but fishing sounds fun!)

New concepts

This is great, I’ll just remake Stardew Valley, right? But I do have new concepts to add to the basic mechanics. And I’m sure that my game, although has the same mechanics as another game, will look and feel completely different.

The biggest concept I am introducing for now (I might get more ideas in the process) is the portal. I imagine it to be a purple, weird, round portal that will wait for the player to find it. Once passed through, after a short, very purple, liquid-feeling cutscene of the player passing through the portal, they will arrive in a completely different world. It will have the same art style, but everything will be different. Where in one world you would have found trees, in the next one you will find animals, or maybe even something unrealistic. There could be a world located in the clouds or something. The sky is not the limit!

OK, okay, let’s get to work!

I’ll give you updates from time to time. Stay tuned if that’s something that interests you! And tell me in the comments about your games – what you play and what you build!