Hey there!
It's been a crazy few months for a multitude of reasons, but I've finally graduated from University! It's a pretty surreal feeling. Three years of hard work finished. It's a little terrifying if I'm honest and the global pandemic has made it even weirder. I now have the oh so scary responsibility of looking for a job. Boring? Exciting? Petrifying? It's all of those things really. This also means I have to do as much as I can to boost my chances of being noticed as I make my way into the working world. The best way I can think of is to create more pieces for my portfolio. Luckily I have all the projects from University I can use but I really want to have more personal projects on there.
This brings me nicely into today's topic. This idea of making my own 2D game came to me whilst I was enjoying an evening of video games with my housemates. I was playing one of my favourite 2D action RPGs "Hyper Light Drifter" by Heart Machine. The fast, fluid and challenging combat coupled with gorgeous pixel art style visuals and haunting soundtrack enchant me every time I play. One simple thought entered my head as I played "I want to make something like this". And then it dawned on me. Why couldn't I? I had the software available to me and I have an understanding of how to make games. What was stopping me? So the next day I sat down and started to plan out how I was going to do this.
Now, I am no programmer. My knowledge of C# is minimal and my art skills are also not the best. I knew I would have to practice and learn all of these skills if I was going to produce something I was proud of. I also realised that this would be a long and involved project. But I was ready to sink my teeth into something. I needed a challenge, and this was it. So off to YouTube I went and dove into the many many tutorials it had to offer. I decided to get to grips with some coding and the basic things I would need in a 2D game first. I decided I wanted to go for top down (old school Zelda style) and after a couple of days work I had the very bare bones of a 2D game - A world to move about in, movement and a working health bar!
Alongside this I was creating the story, world and characters that would be in this game. I chose to take one of my previous projects, Ellandour, and base my game in that world. I enjoyed crafting Ellandour immensely and felt this would be the perfect opportunity to use it in something and really bring it to life. Admittedly, I am making up a lot of the process as I go. I have a trello board up and running to help me keep track of things as doing everything on my own means there is a lot of stuff I have to keep on top of. It feels refreshing though. Having all these parts to work on makes it easy to not get bored as each segment, even though it is part of the bigger picture, is so different from the other that it feels like I'm working on something completely new!
Next month I aim to start learning how to do pixel art and 2D animation which I think I am the most excited for. I did a little 2D animation when I was a young teenager and it was a lot of fun. Although I haven't been working on this project long, I can already feel my skill set strengthening and expanding, and my confidence with the software growing which is a wonderful feeling. That's about all I have to share today though. As this project progresses I will have more news, screenshots and videos to show you, so keep an eye out for that!
Thanks a lot for stopping by, see you all soon!
Sam