I could NEVER finish a game UNTIL THIS...

I've been making video games for a long time but I've always had trouble finishing them motivation has been hard to come by especially with tasks like art and music so gather around as I tell you the tale of the three days where I made this game and how it helped me solve one of my biggest problems as a game developer I've tried to participate in game jams before but I usually give up after the idea phase creative tasks like art creating levels or coming up with ideas has always been a bit difficult for me I can be pretty creative quite often but sometimes I hit these mental blocks and I just drop everything and give up this usually happens when trying to build a world or trying out a new art style and it usually follows with a few days of cripplingly low motivation and productivity but this time would be different I would join this game jam and come out with a fully complete game three days later with this newfound optimism and the game Jam just a few days away I forgot all about it Friday came the first day of the jam and two and a half hours after it started I suddenly remembered I seriously considered not doing the jam but I decided to at least look at the theme survival alright not my favorite theme I feel like it narrowed it down to some sort of endless Runner with that and the extra rule the jam provided to have a high score system an endless Runner would be the perfect game which is why everyone else would make one I pondered this while doing some dishes and taking care of some things at home I sat back down at my computer a few hours later and I wrote down some ideas I came up with a 2d platformer except the player can't move the only way to get around would be from The Recoil of a huge cannon that the player is holding I thought of the high score rule and decided that it would be a speedrunning game I had a hard time coming up with a way to implement the survival theme with the pathos on but I settled for a big wall of impending doom chasing the player which I felt was acceptable the game Jam went from Friday at 3 pm to Monday at 3pm but since I had school on Monday and I'd already wasted a few hours on Friday that pretty much left me with 54 hours to make a game factoring in sleeping eating and a little bit of social interaction that did not leave much time at all with only a few hours left on Friday I thought about getting some art done I wasn't sure what to do as I've been experimenting with different art styles recently but without thinking I opened up a Sprite so pixel art it was with a normal project I would have spent hours deciding on a good player and a resolution to use and I would have gone through iteration after iteration this time I had no time to worry about any of that I just took the first thing on my mind and went with it I pumped out a player Canon Cannonball and tile set now my art was no Masterpiece but for about 15 minutes of work I was quite happy with what I managed to create I made a tile map using the art and I used some trigonometry to have the Cannon Point towards the mouse what I wanted was not to use recoil to move the player but instead to use knockback from the Canon itself basically to move around you'd have to bounce a projectile off of a wall and then have it collide with the player I thought it would be fun but it was impossible to use and it was causing far too many problems for me to sort out so in the spirit of a game Jam I went with the easier option and used recoil there was also an issue where the player could fly if they spam the fire button so rather than adding a cooldown I made it so the Canon needs to charge up and just like that the first day was over I had a very bare bone start and for already being one day in it was not looking good I woke up on day two slightly discouraged I had so many things left to do it wasn't even worth it to make a list and I was thinking about all the other things I could have spent my weekend doing I got to work and started pushing out some content I created another tile set for some slime that the player could stick to I felt like I could make some puzzle type levels with it I added in some placeholder menus and a game over in windscreen I also added in a wallet from pending Doom which looked very menacing I downloaded a path Creator tool from Sebastian lag one of my favorite Unity gurus and I got the wall following a path one problem I was running into was that I could usually get way ahead of the wall but if I increase the Wall's speed it would be way too fast for some difficult parts of the level the solution I came up with was just to increase the speed of the wall when it got to a certain distance away from the player I added a placeholder portal to the finish line and completed the gameplay loop with a timer high score and scene changes working I woke up on day three and ended up being busy for the first few hours the day it was Sunday and unable to skip school the next day it was my last chance at completing my game I sat down at my computer ignorant to the fact that I wouldn't be getting up for the next eight hours the plan was simple make some art to replace the placeholders add post-processing add a background make an enemy make the boring black wall exciting and scary at animation sound effects music improved many as fictiony bugs make five more levels add some environment objects create an itch.io page cover art take screenshots write a description and hopefully nothing goes wrong with the build the first thing I did was add a vignette effect that increased in strength the closer the wall of Doom got to the player then I made an enemy to follow the player I had trouble deciding what the enemies should do but eventually decided that on contact the player would temporarily be blinded I then made a quick explosion effect for the cannon after that I worked on the level select screen and main menu because they were very lacking I am not happy at all with what I decided on but at least it was better than it was I added a subtle gradient to the background and it was a big Improvement I made a Sprite for the enemy and spent some time improving the win and game over screens I added a slider to the game over panel to show how far you got obviously inspired by cuphead I made a portal Sprite and added some fancy particle effects I added some more post-processing and I felt like the game was looking much better the thought of my regular 9 30 bedtime got smothered by the clock ticking louder and faster every second and a feeling settled in for the first time during this challenge fear I was afraid anxious I have this Obsession about getting enough sleep and the thought of waking up at 5 30 for school the next day when the clock was starting to blaze by 10 30. it scared me but I buckled in and I kept working I went online and I made some sound effects and quickly downloaded some free music I looked at the project and decided that I could go to bed at 11 and call it a day but I looked at the stale black wall chasing the player and it decided that it needed an upgrade I hopped into a Sprite and added some texture to the wall I popped it into unity and I gave it some animations to give it some life at that point it was 11 30. I was exhausted I hadn't stood up or stretched my legs in seven hours I was shaking my heart was beating out of my chest I felt like the wall of impending doom I made was right behind me I was so done with this game I just wanted to go to bed but my heart fell as I remembered that I needed an itch.io page I gritted my teeth and fell into a frenzy of manic work I didn't ask why I was doing what I was doing I barely even made any decisions or had any thoughts when I snapped out of it I was sitting in front of a completed itch page with some cover art that I didn't have the energy to criticize my game was uploading and there was nothing to do but wait as I watched that blue bar slowly creeped towards the end I decided I might as well play the completed game I don't know why I did if something was missing broken or even if the game didn't work at all I would have left it the way it was it was over with my heart numb and my brain as smooth as a cue ball I opened my game and to my surprise everything was perfect I played the first level the second the third and as I finished the last level I tear nearly escaped my eye it was beautiful it wasn't perfect it had its flaws the levels were a little boring the UI was terrible and as I would later find out it was way too difficult but it was mine and I made it in less than three days with a smile on my face I hit the submit button and I went to bed a few days later I checked the game Jam page and the results were in I didn't win I definitely didn't expect to but I certainly didn't do badly 18th out of 139 entries I was really surprised to see how high it placed considering how well made some of the games were all of the people that played my game seemed to like it although I had a lot of comments saying it was too hard I really wish I was able to add more than four levels but I'm happy with what I did nonetheless my problem from the start of the challenge having trouble with the creative tasks I realized it was all in my head when I usually try to make art I spend hours trying to get it perfect and I have so little to show for it that I get discouraged and I give up this is a very dangerous phenomenon that I would like to call perfectionism the thing about creativity is that it comes solely from the unconscious mind this means that the more you try to control it or force it the less it will work the problem is that people who are more logical of structured thinkers like me usually have a much harder time doing that and they end up with this plague the solution is to let your mind roam free without judge judgment and criticism and just focus on putting words on a page or paint on a canvas then when you're done you can edit and reiterate during this game Jam I didn't have the time to worry about the quality or take control of my creativity I just had to put out content as quickly as possible and it resulted in something that I'm certainly not ashamed of

Channel: DevWhale

Views: 35,258

Keywords: game jam, game dev, game development, indie game devlog, unity devlog, game devlog, devlog indie game, indie dev, unity game development 3d, indie games 2023, game development unity, indie game development documentary, indie games 2022, indie game dev, unity game development 2d, indie games, unity game development, game jam devlog, i made a game, unity game dev, devlog, video game devlog, I made a video game, indie video game, video game development, video games

Id: NMt3-tg9xqw

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2023