week 01 - ...And so it begins

Over the past few years working on Slidey Feet, I have come to realize a few things. Things in which I never would have considered. Things that most schools or university don't really teach you. Sure, some of these things are quite hard to teach such as self preservation, determination, and any other '-ations' you can think of to get you over that development finishing line. No, the main 'thing' that I had over looked during my development process was a thing called 'community'.

Community is one of the most important aspect of game design. Without a community, your game would most likely fall into the endless void of forgotten games. I know marketing can also play a massive role in bumping up your game's existence, but without your community, your game would get minimum amount of exposure. Not ideal especially for making money.

That's why I have decided to create a Devlog, so that people new or old to the industry can follow my journey through the up's and down's of creating a small mobile game from start to finish. I wish to not only build a community of my own, but to also let other learn and see the inevitable mistakes I make a long the way so that they can avoid them during their development process. I'm hoping this Devlog will be intuitive to a lot of people (including myself), so that I can also learn from my mistakes and grow to become a better game developer.

Your first game is more or less like your first born child; You think that it is the best thing in the world, that nothing else you could produce could ever be as good as the first. Welp, most of the time, it's not the case. Once that second child comes in to the mix, it's down hill for the first one. Sure, you still might care for it and nurture it, but not as much as the second born.
The first idea that you come up with is almost guaranteed not to be your best. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't work on it -by all means, develop that first idea, it will give you some very good experience- but, you shouldn't just stop there. Be creative, be experienced. Doing this will give you the knowledge and understanding on what you will need to do in order to produce better ideas, and higher quality of work. And yes, there is a point to these ramblings about children and favoritism. The point is that I did exactly that; I thought that Slidey Feet was going to be a big success since it was my first game idea, my first born, but it wasn't, and I know that now. But, it was something that I got off of my chest. Something that I wanted to create, purely for myself, and yet, I can say that I have my first published game out in the real world. So yes, develop that first idea, see where it takes you, but don't just stop there, be creative, be determined. 

Now that my self-absorbed ramblings have come to an end, I'll be happy to share my journey of my game development process with you. I hope that this journey will be intuitive not just for me, but for you as well. So to start of, let me share what this game is basically about. The game is called 'Just Survive: Arena'. Hopefully the title alone gives it away. The genre is basically an 'obstacle survivor'.  It is a small mobile game designed for the casual audience. You play a dopey orc who has been thrown into an arena. Your job is to avoid all traps and dangers that are presented to him simply by moving him around with the touch screen controls. Now I know that joy-sticks aren't ideal for mobile devices, but I guess that's where testing comes in to it. I hope to keep this game fairly simple and avoid any complex feature creeps, but i'm sure there will be changes. Simplicity is the goal, so hopefully I can stick to that. ​

I'm hoping to keep these blogs not as long, but as frequent as possible,  to keep you up to date with what I have been doing and what I plan to do. I'm hoping to release these roughly once a week, maybe even twice a week. Now, i'm sure life will throw some heavy curve balls at me while developing this game, which is expected, so if I do fall off the radar a bit, it's for a good reason. Regardless, I will try to keep you in the loop with the 'happenings'. Anyway, I feel as if this first Devlog has been rather 'different' than what I actually expected to write, so hopefully I haven't discouraged you from following along. Again, welcome aboard, hopefully this will be as intuitive and exiting for you as it will for me!

Thanks for reading.