Game Dev Tidbits: A Developer with Impetuous Passion

Probably one thing you'll ask yourself if you want to start with mobile game development is “What type of game should I make?”, "How do I start?" or "What are the things I need?"

Well, if it's your first game – always start small. If you're like me with no funding, like most indie game developers, don't immediately make another Clash of Clans. You're excited, that's understandable. So was I. A lot of ideas have been inside my head and just wanted to jump straight on it. But it's not as easy as it sounds. If you have no idea about game development go with a simple concept like Tetris or Pinball. Start small, and work your way up to more complex games. But I wouldn't personally do those ideas that already exist. Be creative and think of games that you think didn't exist yet. Or let's say pretty much easy game mechanics but add a creative way to make it unique. You have to make your own standards and as long as you also like what you are doing then it's good enough. A good existing system or new system of your own just to make things easy for you. 

Choose a style you want. Say you want a kid's educational game. Remember it's for children so you may want to make the layout of the interface intuitive and easy to understand. Kids mostly like the cutesy stuff, so you may also want to make your graphics look cute with vibrant colors.

For the game engine, my super mini-team is using Unity3D for the games we have up and running. It's the first game engine we ever tried and it's extremely powerful and you can make both 2D and 3D games. It's free and you can publish to Android and iOS (how cool is that). If you don't know programming, there's a plugin called Playmaker for Unity that uses “visual state machines” instead so you won't have to write a single line of code. You have to purchase it though. Recently I also tried Construct 2, an HTML5 game engine designed for 2D games. The event system and pre-made behaviors is really powerful and perfect for beginners as you also don't need programming knowledge. These are the engines we use and are comfortable with.

Most importantly, finish your first game no matter how simple it is! That's how motivation starts for you. Building and compiling your game is also part of the experience.  You will learn later down the road that you will forget the things you did not practice, so don't leave the development hanging.