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Game development: How we made an indie game. Part 1

A story from a programmer

Once I had a week of vacation, in which I planned to rest. On the second day, I had a desire to develop something. I started making a multi-cell inventory, like in Diablo 1 / 2. Having completed it in 4 days, I kept thinking, ‘what else could I do that is like this?’

While I was thinking, I decided to run through my library on Steam. There, an idea came to my mind. Why not port it to my phone so that I can relax while lying in my bed? This is how 4 months of development of a small mobile game begin. I was confident that it could be done in a month.

As a result, I spent the last 2 days of my vacation working on the snake mechanics in 3D. My vacation ended and I was rested and refreshed (not really!). When I started work again, I had noticeably less time to work on the game and the analysis of various mechanics went very slowly.

After 2 weeks, I made a prototype and called a friend to check it out. He was a graphic designer and an artist. I needed help with the design of the project interface, and I hoped he would agree to take part in the development.

Of course, by the time he arrived, I did not have time to finish the entire game blueprint. Therefore, the bus drove through buildings, passed over the water and in some areas twitched more than your relatives at a wedding. A friend looked at it all, scratched his head and asked, “Is this some kind of programmer's joke, for which I am too smart?” But after hearing my idea and looking at the reference, he supported the idea , and we started making a game.

Like any indie game developer, there is no budget, no people, and no polymers. However, I wanted to do something cool. The main problems were that we did not know how to develop in 3D, there was no money to pay smart people to help us, and we didn’t want to go learn 3D programming and development for a year. Therefore, reluctantly, we bought a small pack of nice graphics, low-poly models from Asset Store. Thus, the game has acquired a square look.

I decided to collect the first game card myself, having spent the whole day on it. I leaned back in my chair with a sense of accomplishment, looked at the result of my work and asked myself, “What is this shit?!” I had to do something about it, and I had a plan. Having invited the friend who helped with the interface, under the pretext of sitting and drinking a beer, I began to introduce him to “Unity”. I showed him what it is and how it works. The game worked! This friend, while sipping a beer, became enthusiastic about the project and started asking related questions. So, this friend moved from a simple assistant to a full-fledged development colleague.

After a month of unhurried yet difficult development, we got the first game card. It turned out exactly the way we wanted it to be. This success was very surprising, because there were not many models in the pack, and my colleague had never been engaged in level design before (except for maps from minecraft which he did in grade 10).

After testing the game on the new map, we realized what exactly was missing. MUSIC! Damn music! What kind of music is suitable for relaxation? Of course, lo-fi, which we often listened to while we worked! Recalling that somewhere we had another friend who works in music and studies FL Studio, we ran to him and begged him to write a track for our game. After scratching his head, he said, “I'll sketch something for you on standard plug-ins.” The music that he created turned out to be exactly what we needed, so he ended up taking up the entire musical design of our game! The music created the very atmosphere that we intended. It was perfect! Now, someone could be playing on their phone, lying in a cozy bed, and they could completely immerse themselves in the chill atmosphere. However, we couldn’t stop there. Development was gaining momentum and we had no time for rest.Game development: How we made an indie game. Part 1

p.s
Now our game is released