At 12AM PST on 5/24/2024 I restarted my gamedev journey in Unity. Around six months ago I attempted to make a turn-based card game with networking features. I managed to get a basic skeleton of a game running but mostly focused on the networking aspects of the project. Looking back, I think this may have shifted my attention away from the design aspects of the game as I was navigating the limitations that multiplayer functionality places on the game design choices. Simply put, learning and implementing networking made it difficult for me to get excited about conceptulizing, let alone, implementing new features to the game.

I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to get two instances of my unfinished, feature-poor game to talk to each other. I managed to figure it out and overall I learned alot about general programming practices.

I’m ~12 hours into my new project and much of what I learned is coming back to me. I see growth in my ability to manage my projects structure while considering scalability, legibility and general scripting patterns. I ultimately scrapped the project because my vision out matched my skill. Around this time I reformatted my computer and then went on a six to eight month coding hiatus. I spent some time working on a screenplay but mostly I just played CS2.

The Return of Inspiration

Just before midnight on May 23, 2024 I found myself downloading. During the download I thought about my last attempt at learning to make games. `After realizing that I sabatoged myself during my previous adventure, I decided to approach this next project with the mantra “Keep it simple, stupid.” Through that lens I came up with a core design philosophy:

Make a single-player game - ya dork!

Adding “[stupid]” to my “Keep it simple, stupid.” mantra has engrained a self-deprecating elf in my head. A small price to pay to remember that gamedev is supposed to be fun and I should just chill-out, write-code and make lights move on the screen.

The New game

Okay, okay! About the new game! Again, focusing on keeping it simple, I decided to learn about the development of “Incremental Games” or “Idle Games” or “Clicker Games” as they are more commonly known. With this genre in mind I switch my focus on theme. Space and fantasy came to mind first but I quickly fell asleep thinking about making a “Tavern Clicker”. When I work up I settled on an “espionage” theme.

(Best space game made was a ship based first person shooter called “Decent”. Released in 1995 on MS-DOS. Decent made popular the “6 degrees of freedom” movement as well as 3D graphics. I remember sitting next to my brother around 1998 playing Descent. His hands on one side of the keyboard manning the guns and mine on the other side steering the ship. Fond memories.)