So 2013 by all accounts was a pretty good year.
I managed to get 4 games made. 3 of them nice enough to show to the world,
Android development with libGDX and Spriter, IAP, and in Game ads.
Then I touched Unity, and having spent 11 months doing low level things it’s starting to grow on me. I still have ‘trust’ issues with letting the engine decide how to render things, but it seems to be doing everything I can throw at it.
OneGameAMonth was a success as well, the focus on small things really helped figure out what can be accomplished in a month.
In fact I’d say that that was probably the best takeaway that I learned in 2013.
A month, is not a lot of time. Add in an active family to help raise (play with), freelance work, and a very full time job and I can measure game development in hours per week. So the games I actually finished in a month were actually in the 40-50hr range, so a LD48 game a month essentially.
I’m pretty proud of Candy Goblin and War Mages, they’re pretty entertaining, but I really think that they could use another 6 months of polish to make them good. War Mages might get that at some point, but really, if I only get 400hrs (optimistically) of development time a year, spending them on a project I’m not REALLY excited to be making feels wasteful. So It’s time for a bit of focus and revisit something that I’m excited to create!
Luckily in 2014 1GAM has expanded to where playable milestones qualify, which leads me to the next post 🙂
