Curial Lloses

A Game a Week report diary

[curiallloses]

Week #1. Diving Jumps

Already finished my first game in a week!

Started this project last Monday March 2 with an idea I already had in mind. I wanted to experience the tilt properties of mobile devices accelerometer in some idea easy to implement so I thought "try with a dodge game".

Made an square that moved left and right tilting my mobile and spawned balls in random frequency from top to down. From here I began to build my idea. There would be no square for player but a diver that falls from the sky to the water. No balls to avoid but moving birds and some collectable items as clowds shaped like acrobatic postures. Make as many acrobatics as you can before reaching water! It feel funny before and happily feels still feels fun now :P

Here are a short What went right - What went wrong postmortem:

What went right

I finished my first #1gameaweek!

Since I am a game designer not a pure programmer I feel satisfied with my programming issues resolving. On thing I was afraid when I proposed to do 1GAW was my unskill to program some technical needs or specific game mechanic but I found cappable to aproach to liquid physics or hardware specific properties like accelerometer. Must say that using Game Maker Studio helped that a lot due to its easy to use prebuild functions and a rich-in-answers forums community.

Despite I'm a bit late in writing this report (should finished it by Sunday 12PM) I acomplished satisfactorily all milestones. Ended prototype development by Friday, showed to friends and recieved cool bugs and concept feedback on Saturday  (had a necessary rest too) and build this blog, create and itch.io user and published the game today. And feel that there is margin to optimize the process.

I had nice encouragement from my entourage, friends and girlfriend. They felt my motivation with this project and pushed me at this moments when I was demotivated or in a procratination mood (there was a lot of them!). That was so helpfull.

What went wrong

Too much auto pressure. Since I was so inspired with 1GAW project, I unconsciously put too much pressure expecting to accomplish all goals, and not deceiving all this people al talked with what i wanted to do. Didn't realize that actually I was scared to deceive myself. From Monday to Wednesday there was a lot of procrastination, doubts and excuses like "maybe it's better if I continue with my ready open works, they were doing good and could be bad to stop now". Must say, that one week later and 1 prototype finished I miss a bit less my previous work ^^

Related to the above I put the typical expectations on the idea. I wanted to make a great-small game with lot of minifeatures, levels, menus, tutorial, score screen... It cost me some time to accept to focus on the core mechanic to make it fun even if completely finished at first play.

Like I said, I'm not a pure programmer. I "lost" almost two days to program a fucking jump mechanic with acceleration and fricction. I'm neither a physicist! Could'nt work on game rhythm as I would because of this.

It's not really bad but now I feel sad not to continue with this prototype and at this moment I have no idea for tomorrow's new game!

And that's all for now, hope you like the prototipe if you play it and see you next week!

You can download this prototype for Windows and Android by this itch.io link

[curiallloses]

Starting to make a game a week

Hi there, I’m Curial, a passionate game designer, quite a bit inevitably entrepreneur, former producer in a small, cofounded, multimedia studio and right now and finally, a want to be indie game developer.

Yet how do someone becomes an indiedev? 

I tried that way about having an idea, some friends to work with, no budget at all and that willpower to kill your free time to get this idea done to became a great game. But it didn’t worked, it was an inspiring process with lot of usefull lessons but kind of a failing one I think manly for 3 reasons:

The idea was too much incomplete. It still seems great to me but I learned that an idea is great when you can not only explain but demonstrate it. Ideas are so different in every mind wether players or even its current devs but the game is something specific and this tangible material is what must be great itself not the idea. Users don’t play with geniouses devs ideas, they play with their games.

We weren’t a developer team, we were friends and dev colleagues. Even we respected our opinions and team roles we had different aspirations. I learned that a “garage team” it’s hardly a work team.

No budget and a flexible timing plan is an error. If there is no budget at least it is imperative to have savings so team can really focus part of its time in game dev and achieving milestones. Milestones are essential to control the evolving process of the idea, when you miss milestones your game idea becomes messy and hard to transform in a fun and playable game.

We were like an aspiring music band: It was fun, we loved to be part of it but with no net to save a fall, we were no prepared to be much serious and preferred to look for an stable job.

And I ended up with that feeling: you can only become an indie dev with a successful student project or winning the lottery.

Fortunately to me, there’s Gamasutra. When I’m low in gamedev confidence I always go to gamasutra where I find lot of inspiring articles about all game dev disciplines: production, design, programming, art… and found this Vlambeer’s cofounder Rami Ismail revealing article: Game A Week: Getting Experienced At Failure talks about the importance of demystify the power of the ideas and turn our efforts into the process. Not only learn and improve the process but enjoy it too.

Since this read I followed more people that talked or were conducting this practice and find MsMinotaur’s work who was making a game a week during a whole year and close to end talked about her experience un GDC ‘14. That seemed to me a huge enterprise but absolutely inspiring and I decided to start saving some funds and freeze my multimedia studio association to begin with it following this rules:

Make a game every week. Start the project after Monday 12:00AM and finish it before Sunday 11:59PM. It does not matter whether the game is digital or analog. It does not matter what you use to create the game. The only rule is to make a game.

Release the game every week. Whatever you make, whether it is complete, stable, polished or good, release it to the world through a website you specifically set up for this goal. Spread the link to the page of the game of the week on every social medium you own. Ask people to give you feedback. Wordpress or itch.io are quite capable of handling this.

Do not revisit a game. You can go back and revisit games after you’re done. You cannot work on previous week’s game or idea again the next week. This is not about exploring specific games, this is about gaining experience. If a game is so special it sticks for a while, you can work besides Game A Week or after you’re done. You still have to complete something else each week.

Try and avoid patterns in your work. Try and do something completely different each week. Instead of making digital games, try making an analog game. Instead of making an action game, make a puzzle game. If you find yourself in a pattern, take note of that pattern and break out of it for a week or two before deciding to head back. Make patterns a conscious choice, rather than an accepted and unquestioned reality.

Reflect. Spend each week talking to some people that played your game. Write down your findings in a journal (or in a blogpost). Write down what you made, what went right, what went wrong and what was interesting.

Making a game in a week is an achievable task even for one alone developer with not budget at all. Anyone can do a game in a week if doesn’t expect something great but in only a week, the dev will have thought an idea, design it, programmed, make some art, tested, published and take some postmortem conclusions.

I’ll start with this for 2 months (according science, humans need about 66 days to get a habit) and if my funds permit it, look to length for more time. Each week I’ll post a report from my game in this blog and mybe in a few months I find myself prepared to start an indiedev project again!