Our very first fully finished game, Purple Box Escapes Robots, has been released!

After many many years of trying (with various level of effort), and many unfinished prototypes (3 of just this game alone), it feels really good to finally have a project be done. I guess there will always be things that you wish you'd have done different if given another chance. But I am satisfied. More than satisfied. I'm proud!

I'm happy I came back to give Game Development another shot, after having given up on it five years ago. Reapproaching it with a fresher and more mature mind helped a lot. Although I definitely still have a lot of growing to do. 

So what worked this time? How did you finish your first project? What did you learn?

So many questions. I don't expect any of the following tips to be particularly ground-breaking, but here goes. My top three tips:

1. USE AN EXISTING FRAMEWORK/ENGINE. There is very little point in reinventing the wheel, unless your goal is to reinvent the wheel. You're trying to build a car. Use the wheels that exist, don't get caught up trying to make and use your own tech, unless absolutely necessary. My partner and I have fallen into this trap many times. Existing game engines do better than you. Just take the time to learn them properly.

2. KEEP YOUR PROJECT'S SCOPE SMALL. Work towards a simple, grey-boxed complete version of your game as soon as possible, preferably in the first week (much like a gamejam project), and just spend the rest of the time on polishing. My partner and I were upset about how much progress we managed to make in the first weekend, with this approach. It truly felt like we had gotten more done in a weekend, than in any of our other prototypes ever, some of which we worked on for months.

I'm a very vocal opponent of rewriting code, unless absolutely necessary. If the project is small, and your goal is to finish, you will not be saving anyone any time by rewriting. Just resolve to do better next project.

3. DON'T BLOW UP YOUR PROJECT'S SCOPE TOO MUCH. Enough is enough. It will happen, but really be mindful of how much work you're getting yourself into, for the payoff. I don't think it's a good idea to spend 50 hours on a feature that is shown for two seconds, unless it's a very important moment. Stick to the plan, you're trying to finish a project. Don't let perfect get in the way of good enough. 

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One other thing I wanted to share. My partner and I do not have any real artistic talent, so we often get roadblocked while developing games. This project taught us that it's totally fine to settle for simple art. There are other ways to make the game look and feel good, through particles, effects and shaders. While I'm no expert (yet) in that department either, I've really begun to feel the strength of it, and I'll be able to do better in the future.

The other option, and what I'm going to try for my next project, is to acquire some ready-made art (itchio has so much) and use that. The problem with ready-made art is of course that your game concept doesn't always form-fit the art you find. My solution for that is to flip your process upside down. Create a game concept that would fit the art. A lot of the ready-made art will have "an intended game concept" to go along with it - I wouldn't recommend building that, but to, instead, figure out your own unique concept, that would still fit the art.

Okay, that's all the thoughts I wanted to type up. Thanks for reading. Go play Purple Box Escapes Robots, and tell me how far you got, and if you like it!

Thanks for reading.

-Kevin
Team Broodrooster