Step 1 - An Idea

Woah! What the...what are you still doing here? I thought I lost you back at the ruins! What's that? No, no I didn't mean to leave you caught in that bear trap. I was...err...I was going for help. But it's great you're still alive...really. Huh? Oh yes, of course we are still going on that epic quest of indie game creation. Let’s put a bit of goat weed on your leg wound to stop it falling off shall we? While I do that I can catch you up with what I've been up to since you've been gone.

The Mountain

So last time we talked I shared with you my journey to the land of creative inspiration. We talked of the lighter and darker sides the creativity and the path that led me to my moment of clarity when I discovered my purpose in life. What I want to show you this time around is a mountain. Can you take a minute and let your imagination fill up with your creative mountain, your magnificent peak of glorious conquest? That’s it! Now picture yourself at the top standing on its uppermost tip, staring out over all your accomplishments. Imagine you have reached that future point where all your wildest dreams are reality. Picture how you succeeded easily at every adversity and your flashy clothes stayed immaculately well ironed in the process. Now wipe that ridiculous image from your mind, because you are getting way ahead of yourself! This image represents a falsity perpetuated far too often to appealing to the egotist within us. It skips all the awesome questy bits and takes us straight to an effortless climax.

The Foothills

You see the road starts not in the hanging peaks of the mountain but the grubby roads of the foothills below it. You see most people overlook the starting point because they are so focused on the end product. They don’t brace for the cold wind that hits you when you take that first step down the road to glory. This is where the signs are written by our own false confidence and the traps set by our own fears. We doubt our capability, underestimate the time our quest will take and often forget to realise that failure is part of the process. How does this relate to indie game making you ask? Well it was in these foothills I learnt how to go from wanting to climb a mountain to getting to the base of one with a clear plan of action. It all started with preparation, a key step often overlooked by the novice mountaineer.

I understood from reading the two books I mentioned before (The Game Makers Apprentice and Companion) that if I had any hope of reaching my mountain peak I would need to write a pretty comprehensive project brief in order to work out how much time and effort I would need to commit to each section of development and also to understand how ambitious my end goal was. So I opened a fresh word doc and started bashing away typing out a summary of the game, I started with an outline of the game, the style I would use, the different levels and each of the different type of assets I would need to make in order to complete the finished game including cut scenes etc. It took me a good few hours and at times was tedious. But once it was finished I had a real sense of what my target was. I had drawn a rough sketch of the glorious mount Black White Trey and its winter peak and knew exactly how much rope to bring.

An Idea 

Now I can see by that foothills look on your face that you are still fantasizing about the mountain top. No, just because you have a beard does not make you a mountaineer. There is more than one bear trap out there and you only have two legs. I'm sorry, I know that's a sore point.

So, to give you an idea of what a good rope looks like, here is my game outline for Black White Trey: 

"Black White Trey is a quest driven Top-Down-Shooter that leads the player into morale choices which impact on the two possible paths of the story. One leads to a moral high ground full of intellectual problem solving and thievery. The other pathway leads to action packed violence and moral despair. The game will be set in a fictional city based loosely on New York called Midnight Fair and will be split into five unlock-able districts, with three levels in each area. It will feature ten weapons with three different ammo types available for purchase through a store system. There will also be an leveling system that unlocks different skills which can be swapped out depending on the players situation. The player will be able to perform many different actions which will lead to creative ways to solve the problems of the game. The story will be presented in a number of stylised cut-scenes available on completion of each district."

I implore you, if you have any great idea for an indie game. Open up an empty document and bash out something like the above and then since you have started down that path go on and flesh it out a little. Take your time, do it when you feel inspired when an idea is fresh in your head. If you do this well you will always have this first step you can go back to at any time. Taking quality steps in the right direction is one of the ways to overcome the challenging foothills of despair.

The Treasure Chest

The next thing most people who know a bit about the indie game journey process tell you is to think about budget. This was an easy step for me. I have decided that I will be doing everything, from concept art, to coding, to game art, to marketing, to screen printing t-shirts and beta testing. I am doing this not just because my purse strings are tighter than the bear trap you went dancing into, but because I want to learn. This game for me is not so much about having the most amazing, polished game on the market. But to have something I am proud to have created from start to finish. I want to relish the journey from the foothills to the great snowy summit. In fact I am so convinced the journey is more valuable than the prize that I don’t care if I make a viable game, I don’t care if it takes me two years instead of one. I only care that I make steps in the right direction and that I learn from the mistakes along the way. If you see your first project as a learning experience, and don’t focus so much on success being about have a big gold chest at the end of your quest you will find the journey much more enjoyable.

Graphic Artistry

Deciding on a graphic style in general can be difficult. Maybe you want the slick style vector shadow graphics of Limbo or the artfully hand painted pixels of Fez, that's up to you. This step can be pretty tough for some people depending on your background. If you aren't pixelly inclined then I would suggest finding someone to collaborate with or look to possibly commission someone to do the work for you. A bit of searching found me this page there are also a many great artists on Twitter that aren't too hard to find. If you are like me and want to do it alone I would suggest thinking outside the box with your game idea. Some games do amazing things with very little in the way of graphic glory.

Platform(er)

Once you have your idea fleshed out and have your budget fleshed sorted it is time to choose a platform for your game. Are you making a PC or console game. Maybe you want to tackle the profitable mobile market? This will then in turn decide which development platform you will work on, for the more adept programmer I would go with Unity. For those like me starting out I would go with Game Maker, unless you’re making an old school role playing game, then RPG Maker is probably more for you. There are also other engines out there that require a much higher level of ability, but do your own research on this. A good way is to look into the games other people have made with each so you can see what each platform is capable of before you jump in head first. Again there is no harm experimenting but don’t get distracted from your goal, because as much as getting to the top of the mountain isn't everything, you still to climb one to be a mountaineer.

Target Audience

If you are planning to sell your game then you need to know who you are marketing it too and also understand how to get your game put there. If you are a gamer and you are making a game you want to play, then there is going to be an audience of sorts. But if you intend on making lots of money and being ridiculously successful or even break even you will need to spend further time on this invested in this step. Again I go back to the point I made previously about reaching your goal. If like me this is your first game, then don’t stress on success. The vast majority of most successful indie game makers made a dud first time around.

The Perilous Foothills

Ok, so you are still here reading my blog and not out there failing. I guess your leg is still a bit sore or you just really love mountain analogies. Before we throw water on this blog entry and say goodbye to another stage of the quest, I wanted to briefly and honestly talk once more about creativity and more importantly the perils of the first few steps in the foothills. When I began this journey I was afraid, scared silly of not reaching my goal. I thought I would lose focus and patience with the process, and at times I did. I got frustrated and thought to myself, this is it. This project is too hard; it’s going to take too long. The nights were cold and hard and I wanted to just pack up and go home.

Why didn't I go back like I had so many times before? Well I think because I allowed myself the luxury of failure. That, and I made sure I spent time doing everything right and not rushing toward my goal. That’s not to say I did that the whole way, to begin with when I made my first HUD for the game I did it in black and white thinking it would be the final version. I soon realised I didn’t like it, not one bit, and redid the whole thing. It sucked going backwards, but It allowed me to perfect my initial idea and the next HUD was way better. The colour looked amazing and I even added a few features that I didn’t have the first time around.

When I finally burnt out after working ridiculous hours for the first four weeks of the project, I was freaking out. I couldn't stand the sight of the damned game! I didn’t want to even think about game making ever again, it made me that irate! But I took a break, spent some time with friends, doing outside things and I soon realised I wanted to go back. The progress I had made was clear and well defined. It wasn't some loosely drawn wild vision of a three year old high on sugar, but something I could see and appreciate and was proud of.

The point is if you want to climb your creative mountain you need to go about it the right way. You need to know the lay of the land, and plan out your path. Take time to enjoy the wind in your hair when you climb that first peak. Most of all don’t beat yourself up when you slip and scrape your knee occasionally. Because the hardest part of all is getting up, dusting yourself off and realising you just learnt something valuable. You are still there, slogging away towards that mighty peak where many others have given up and gone home. As long as we both take the right steps (and gangrene doesn't take your leg) we will reach that summit together and share the hard earned riches of knowledge!

Thanks again for tuning in for another episode in the adventures of Black White Trey. I hope you enjoyed the mountainous metaphors and took a little rope away with you for your journey. Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends or anyone who might be interested! We will be back next week for more adventures and the next step in the long journey to the top.

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