You are awake. Through the fog of memory you are vaguely aware that significant time has passed..years in fact since you stood in the murky caves at the bottom of the mountain. It feels like centuries have gone by since you embarked on this fated journey with that madman of a wizard, what was his name again? You search around feeling a sense of disembodiment that feels all to real overcome you as you try in vain to get your bearings. Everything around you is covered with a glassy haze and you spin around I a liquidy twirl, only to be confronted with...
Hello there weary traveller! Or should I say smeary traveller, eh? Your jar is in an awful need of a clean, heh...whats that? Oh yes well, you wouldn't know would you. I had almost forgotten you were still, umn, around. Turns out with a little bit of magic and a whole lot of luck you can save a persons soul as long as you have at least a little teeny piece of them left. But you were lucky, weren't you. After that goblin tore of what was left of your limbs and was drying you out for backpack leather I was lucky enough to stop your journey to the great beyond with a bit of the old magic dust and an eyeball.
Dear Reader
Welcome! For those of you joining me for the first time, hello there. For anyone who has managed to come back and discover this blog after all these years. What can I say? I'm sorry, congratulations? We made it?! Because, that in fact is why I am back and here and you are too here and we are together. Because 'We made it!!" That tower you see is no illusion of grand magic. No mirage through the glass, so to speak, it is real. I have finished my very first game and will be publishing it on Steam next month. Yes, next month! You are in for a rare treat indeed, in this blogs tradition a successful ending! Read on for more...
Epic Adventures
Let me start by saying I'm sorry for my absence, sincerely and truly. To myself and to you the reader it has been a long and uncertain journey that has finally led here, the top of a giant tower on top of a treacherous mountain of doom. We have made it, though and perhaps that's what matters, or perhaps the journey is what we should reflect on. I am too shocked by this revelation, Black White Trey is long dead and another game lies dead in between and the one that will be out on Steam next month.
How did we get here? Well to be totally honest I am not sure how I overcame all the obstacles and disappointments. All I know is that I kept moving forward and trying again, learning from the mistakes of the first two failures and taking all I knew to the third and final triumph. Will this be the success story I have dreamed of? It kind of already feels like I have made it. The game is finished albeit for a few small finishing touches and minor adjustments.
Dungeon Scale
So I think we could ruminate and reminisce on past mistakes, but lets just say this. I had some grand ideas and they led me on side quests and adventures with dismal ends (but at least you didn't die). That said, I did gain some experience and levels along the way and some knowledge that helped get this game across the finish line.
The game in question is Dungeon Scale, a couch multiplayer game for 2-4 players that is about racing your opponents to the top of a tower filled with monsters, traps and gold. The levels are exactly the same for each player, but as the game progresses those who rank higher will be faced with faster monsters and more dangerous traps, to give some balance of course. There is also a store that allows player to spend their winnings along the way on upgrades, or bombs to waylay the top three players. The game has a total of eight levels spanning four scenario types. In addition to the game balance feature, there is the ability to dish out justice to the losers if you or your team manage to pull off the win.
I have been testing the game over the course of it's production, which began late last year, within my family. I have been adding features, fixing bugs and trying to get as perfect a balance as possible. Within the bounds of my family I have to say it has been successful. Last weekend we played for a few hours and it was just amazing to see the reactions of my kids who are avid gamer's and my fiance, who is definitely not. There were such authentic moments like when my son managed to get overly cocky about winning causing him to kill himself within five seconds of starting a level and his older sister taking advantage of his error by collecting as much of the goodies as she could and securing a massive victory. Needless to say when the fates were decided my son was not awarded a gold coin by the glorious Queen of the Realm! Nor, did the King of the next realm forget this slight.
On and on went the cycle and it felt so great and so natural. I feel like no matter how the release goes on Steam, this for me this was a real win.
See, I still remember that fateful magic moment in the twilight of evening, when I had been searching for an age on the PS4 store for a suitable couch coop game for me and the kids to play and came up trumps. This had happened so many times that watching trailers for games was more of an event than actually playing the games with my kids. I went to lay down for sleep and started to think of what would be a cool game, with an 'if only' attitude I started to picture dungeon scale. The kids and I love action RPG games, but we also needed something simple enough my fiance would be interested. Before I knew it the basic concept for Dungeon Scale was born.
The First Hurdle
As soon as I had the idea the first hurdle I had came from a solid understand of my programming skills from previous endeavours. How can I display four views on one screen, if I could do this I was pretty sure everything else I had thought up in principle was within my purview of skills. I think it was even the next day that I had my girlfriend trying to race me up a blocked out set of platforms and before you knew it we were competing and having fun. No traps, no goodies just simply get to the top first and bang right then I knew I was onto something. It was only a small flame, but I fanned it and kept it safe. Almost as safe as you were in your glass jar riding with the donkey food! Am I right? Ahem, anyway I digress. Point is this was the starting point, perhaps you have been here. I had twice before at least and this is where the path changed slightly from my previous adventures.
Forget the Mountain
So if you have been paying any sort of attention I am guessing you realise after two failed game attempts that before I even began I decided that this idea was going to stay hill sized and was not going to turn into a mountain. However, of course if you also read the above talk of frustum culling and fate decision screens you realise feature creep well and truly happened and again almost led to yet another dismal failure. But, what is this I have here, a Potion of Forgotten Knowledge! Mmm, delicious and tangy, full of stuff I didn't actually stuff up last time.
When I began in earnest at the end of 2019 I planned to make a couch coop game for two to four players. This idea turned into a couch coop game that had a solo/coop campaign with twenty levels. Why not, this seemed feasible. The principle game mechanics were the same, I just needed to change where the players spawned, the scoring system, add in different mechanic here. A variation there and before you knew it I would need to make two games when I wasn't even done with one.
Luckily the potion had kicked in and I remembered something I had learnt when making Shafted, the game in between BWT and DS. Make quality the first pass and you will have a starting point and not just more work to come back to. This might sound counter intuitive as a lot of the information out there is all about prototyping, as quick as you can to make sure your idea is sound. While I agree this is one hundred percent a great idea if you are testing a concept. When you are at the stage of making your game you want to be working towards finished systems and not broken things you will have to redo again when your motivation is waning.
In BWT, I remember I built a door picking mechanic which took me around a month to finish. The system was great, although the door opening was very buggy. But you could pick that lock like nobodies business. In Shafted, I created all the systems up front, but didn't end up making more than one level. Shafted was a good game concept I think, but the tough part was I had no one to share it with. I didn't have enough of a game to play so I couldn't get feedback. Eventually I was left with a bunch of mechanics and no game. Sadly the motivation died and I was left dejected and back to square one. With these two failures under my belt I knew two things. One, I needed to keep the scope in check and two I needed to make systems I would use in the final game.
I also took shortcuts. I bought assets off Itch.io as art is one of the greatest time sinks of solo game dev and getting stuck in making pretty things can be your undoing. As I had with Shafted, I limited myself to the GameMaker sprite editor and worked with a limited colour palette and got to work. I made the basic game loop, score screen and then set to work on the shop. I took a few weeks leave from my day job and spent long hours trying to finish. It was exciting and exhausting all over again and eventually sometime in January of this year the fire burnt out. I had got to a point where my hill had become yet another mountain. So I went away again and gave the project some space saying to myself with that familiar tone 'I will finish this later, I promise.' However this time I did come back.
Riding waves
I have suspected for a while that I may suffer from a mild form of bi-polar or other disorder that involves heavy mood swings caused by nothing in particular. Reason being is that I go through waves of motivation, exercise and creative activity which seem to fall outside the normal realm of normalcy and have done for quite a while. But whether I suffer from any real mental illness or I am just a hypochondriac is not the point of this story. The point my dear friend, is that I know myself well enough at thirty seven to know that I will be motivated strongly for a period of around a month and then that motivation will evaporate. I also know from experience that this motivation will come back and with it another wave of creativity.
So when I was lying in that dead ocean of fast food containers and stretchy pants I knew in my heart that wave would be back and this time I had my eyes firmly set on that same hill. When the exercise started again I started in on Dungeon Scale. It started the second time watching a video by a Youtube indiedev and suddenly like a light being switched back on it was there again.
I opened up my game and started jumping through the code and playing around. I ended up making a few small fixes here and there and before you knew it I was back in one hundred percent.
Knowing that this motivation was a finite resource I focused on the big issues, the interface needed updating. The score screen needed a rework and levels needed to be created. I set about on the hardest problems first.
Being Uncomfortable
One thing I always found was there was always seemed to be a part of the game I wanted to work on more than others, a part of the game I had envisioned and loved the idea for and really wanted to see work. This inspiration you have can be harnessed. For me personally it was motivation to get through the days and days of getting my scores to calculate correctly, to get the displays to work as intended and to fight through all of the little bugs that required hours and hours to fix.
The trick to knowing what it is you should work on first is like this, if when you attempt it you get that niggling doubt and procrastination bug crawling up your neck when you first start on a task, you are doing exactly what you should be doing. Stick to that piece of work, no matter how tedious and it will help provide that motivation. Those victories over the hard parts of my game are what made me feel the most sense of accomplishment.
That and sharing success is a huge and important part I had forgotten along the way. I have been lucky to be in a great relationship with someone who gets excited at every little victory and new part of my game. I have two kids who adore gaming and are always keen to help me test out my game. I think if you are going to make your game, you need your audience. That, I think was the real key to me finishing my game. Find someone who is as passionate about your game as you are and you are halfway there.
Step 137 - Win
That is about all I have to say for now about Dungeon Scale and my six years of game development. I hope you found something out that might help you on your journey.
I hope my 137 Steps of game making have provided the clear and concise guide you too need to a successful indie developer...or not. I mean you were riding with the donkey for most of it.
I wish you all the success with your game development journeys.
Thanks again fellow traveller, for the steps we have taken and the journey well spent! If you enjoyed my blog please come follow me and drop a message @mfproduct.
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