Some months back I went to a local presentation by the Unity champions at The Arcade (a collaborative workspace specifically for game developers and creatives) in Melbourne. It was one of those “learn about others and gain insight into one’s self” moments. One thing I picked up from one of the presenters from Hipster Whale (makers of Crossy Road) was that when they were developing a new game they tried to keep the proof of concept to a two week period. Some time later with this in mind I presented to myself the “Five Games in Ten Weeks Challenge!” to see if I could really push out five different games in ten weeks.
I came up with the following list:
1. A Maths game
2. A 2D side scroller
3. A Music game
4. A 3D Bug game
5. An Interactive online game
It ended up being a great motivator and really fun.
Here are the games as they came out:
The Maths game ended up as NumBlocks – the number matching game that is currently in Beta Testing in the AppStore. Opt-In here if you want to help test it!
The 2D side scroller was the hilarious (for the wrong reasons) Nearly Naked Ninja. It really tested my animation skills and I found many weaknesses in my artwork.
The Music Game was an interactive fly-through of different planets that resonated when poked. A mellow peaceful vibe in deep space.
The 3D Bug game became Dragon Fly Racing! I really wished I had more time to come back to the terrain but flying around as a Cordulegaster boltonii or the Golden-ringed Dragonfly was awesome. Thank you Blender!
The Interactive Online game was too hard to do in two weeks as I upgraded Unity to 2017.1.0f3 during that time and I didn’t want to play around with node.js. So that game became a funny Plastic Soldiers shooting game where I got to do some sculpting in MagicaVoxel to chill out. Be prepared to be flexible.
In the end I got one game into Beta Testing and found lots of new ways of working. I also found many many shortfalls in my game designs and “programmer art” and animation and patience.
But the best thing about it was that I totally killed five games and worked out which one’s were winners and where I need to work on my skills for the future. Can recommend it.