Currently, I have two games currently in active development. The first is a game I have been working on with my team since late 2015 called Project: Blue, and another that I am now calling “Pixel Kitchen”. My team is currently building Project: Blue in Unity3d and working on that game has been an invaluable learning experience.
Regardless of if that game is successful or not, what we have gained from that project will allow us to build an even better game even faster than this one.
While working on Project: Blue I had decided that I wanted to work on my own game, as a challenge and side project. Instead of using Unity3d I was going to use this opportunity to learn a new tool, Gamemaker Studio. This project was conceived as something that would allow me to finish a game inside of a month, but like with most things, the scope has become a little bit larger than what was originally intended.
Because my skills as a graphics artist and as a music composer are limited (read as non-existent) I wanted to design a game that would work with my artistic talents so that I could complete this game on my own. One of my favorite video games when I was growing up was Chef from Game and Watch Gallery 2 and I thought I would take a crack at trying to make a version of this game for iOS and Android.
I quickly found out that my current skill level, with pixel art specifically, would not be sufficient to be able to complete the project and I needed to practice before I could get too deep into development. That is when I had discovered Heartbeast Aka Benjamin Anderson, who has a series of Udemy and Teachable courses on the some subjects of game development and, more importantly, pixel art. I subscribed to his pixel art course and started to practice and I was quite pleased with the results of his lectures.
I am not finished the lectures, I am actually about half way through, but I think I can move forward with the development of this game and I am happy to see that I am starting to learn a new skill that will help me in the future if I am going to try to turn this into a career. I hope to have more to show about this little side project of mine shortly.
Until Next Time
– Steven