Since it's Throwback Thursday and all (and since I'm waiting on a driver install and need something to do for about three minutes), I thought it might be fun to look back at our first ever games!
For me, other than working my way through the old Brackey's tutorial to make an endless ball-rolling game, the first one I ever made and completed was Good Luck With The Lamps, a very basic pixel art platformer where you're just a normal regular bear trying to turn all his lamps off and go to bed.
But the lamps have other ideas! spooky hand wave
This was for the "My First Game Jam" Summer 2020 edition which lasted about two weeks, if it'd been any less there's no way we could have finished. I say "we" because this was actually a joint effort between me and my SO, who afterwards vowed never to work with me again lol.
Things learned:
- If you're doing pixel art the pixels should probably all be the same size
- Unity's tilemap system
- Basic 2d animations
- How to make a cut scene
- I hate making platformers!
Ok, your turn!
My first games were with scratch, but my first real, finished game with a proper game engine was Rampant. It was an endless top down shooter with a basic upgrade system. It isn't very good, it gets boring fast, and I think it's framerate dependent. But I remember it being fun to work on.
I'd be very surprised if anyone's very first attempt was actually good! (and also I might hate them a bit)
Just downloaded Rampant, I'll give it a whirl after work. Always interesting to see where people got their start, imo. And it's important to remember that what seems like at least 50% of "game devs" never even complete a single game, so both of our crappy first entries put us ahead of the curve there 😄
Yeah behind that game is a bunch of unfinished unity projects... I 100% agree that for game devs (or any creative field, really) it's so important to just get something to the finish line, at least for a first project.
You're super right... I've been working on some top down prototype in Godot with an office worker guy, who walks around in some golden fields with some pixel art. I gotta finish that. Thanks for the motivation.