I've always loved playing video games. From the moment I realized there were places called arcades with wonderful machines that ate your coins, I was hooked. Game and Watch? Nagged my mom for every single one. Nintendo Famicom? We had ALL the bootleg cartridges. Gameboy? Couldn't afford it so I burned with envy. Original Xbox? I have 4 of 'em stashed away somewhere. Playstation 1-5? Heck, yeah. Mobile? My husband bought our first iPad because we saw someone playing Angry Birds on it. PC? I'm playing The Ascent with my whole family right now.
More than playing video games, though, what I wanted to do as a kid was to MAKE games. I still remember punching in a borrowed Mario Bros cartridge for the first time, pressing START and having a freaking epiphany. How cool was it that someone MADE this?? To heck with being an astronaut, when I grew up, I was going to do THIS. I knew it with all the certainty of 8-year-old me. But you know how it goes: like most childhood dreams, I put this one on a shelf and gradually left it behind. I didn't become an astronaut either (in case you were wondering).
What I did was drop out of university in my third year. And since then, I've been a copywriter, graphic designer, business owner, immigrant, stay-at-home spouse, and for a long time, the stay-at-home parent. And it's been great. Life with all its up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A's...it's all been wonderful.
"Hold up," you might say, if you're still reading this. "Why are you telling us all this? Boring."
Right. Let me get to it. I'm 48 and if there's a lesson that has been inescapable these past two years is that we may not see tomorrow. So, I've decided to focus on happiness in the here and now. Carpet diem, as my kid used to say when he was little. And you know one thing that has added to my happiness? Dusting off my dream, sitting my ass down and finally learning how to be a game developer. And happier still? I've done this with my husband.
So we've published our first mobile game. It's called "Slingshot Effect" and it's available on App Store or on Google Play. It's an infinite jumper that's easy to just pick up and play. Perfect for commutes or if you're stuck in a waiting room somewhere. It's a paid app because we feel strongly that the level of monetization in the casual game space is just...ugh...it's bad. Thanks for listening, I really appreciate it.
TLDR:
When I was a kid, I wanted to make video games. And now that I'm kind of old, my husband and I made one.
Congrats! It's absolutely refreshing to dust off an old hobby and do something with it!
I'm only 28, but during the pandemic I decided to dust off my old electronics hobbies that fell by the wayside when the mobile app boom started.
Middle school and early high school me thought I was going into robotics, but the iPhone came out the year I started high school. When the App Store came out the following year, the smartphone revolution started, and about a year later I went all in on mobile apps and gaming for the rest of high school and my college years. Contract iOS and Unity3D work got me through college.
It's somewhat ironic, because I haven't written or worked on a single mobile app since I left college (nor have I owned an Apple device). I ended up taking all of the knowledge of embedded Linux systems I gained doing robotics and started doing esoteric high performance storage virtualization systems as the starting point of my career. Never saw that one coming.
I hadn't really done any serious hobby electronics in nearly a decade, but I've continued to lug all of the equipment around every time I move. So, I dusted off some old hardware and got hooked once again, only to find out that the AVR is old news and everyone is into ESP32 and ARM these days :)
Thanks! I've always been fascinated by electronics and I so envy people in that domain. I bought an Arduino board (sorry if that's totally kiddie to you) and some parts and so far, my son and I have made a little robot that runs very inefficiently on 9-volt batteries. I just want to plug the damn thing in to overcome the power issue.
(I don't know how much you know about electronics so sorry if I'm stating the obvious here)
9V batteries sound and look like they should last long, but putting 6 1.5V batteries in series should last much longer.
9V batteries have a typical capacity of ~550 mAh, 1.5V batteries (even rechargeable ones) have a typical capacity of 2000~3000 mAh.
I'm glad my lil research has been validated. Last week I bought one of those adapter cases that accommodate 6 1.5Vs but have 9V terminals. Now how to tape that case to my little robot.
The Arduino regulator can very likely take 10 Volts - although do check first.
Advantages: fairly cheap, rechargeable, and you can give PowerBanks to kids or whatever when finished or if you upgrade to something better. Maybe get kids to help!
> sorry if that's totally kiddie to you
Things are only kiddie if you think they are (personally I enjoy learning from children).
Worrying too much about what others think will hold you back from having fun! Enjoy the game programming!
Thank you. I guess a lot of people (including me) can be apprehensive about wading into technical domains. I've run into some hostile online environments, for sure. But a great majority of people are are always enthusiastic to help anyone who wants to learn.
> But a great majority of people are are always enthusiastic to help anyone who wants to learn.
That's one of the things I miss about "the old Internet". I remember when I first started using it around ~2000 to communicate with other electronics hobbyists, back when avrfreaks was big or just random people's widget shops has forums. There seemingly wasn't the level of toxicity that exists today. The first time I think I ever ran into someone being toxic (directly to me) was about 2009. IIRC they were saying that because I wasn't an EE I shouldn't be attempting to help people or something (I was halfway though high school at that point).
If a friend who knows nothing about computers asks me for help, they are often ashamed of their lack of knowledge. I usually can fix the problem. However I feel even more deeply ignorant than them, since I have spent my life working with computers and electronics. For example I might reinstall Windows, and my friend thinks I am a computer wizard, but I am fraudulent in my own mind because I didn’t actually diagnose the cause of their problem. By learning more we discover the depths of our own ignorance.
I’m not sure how to nurture my own inner child of discovery and protect it from the unconstructive bullies in the world, or my own negative inner voices. We all have to learn our own techniques, since they have to be personalised to our own personalities.
Anyway, good fortune on your own path of discovery, and thank you for publishing your journey. I do find it inspiring!
> I bought an Arduino board (sorry if that's totally kiddie to you)
Not kiddie at all, AVR microcontrollers have been used commercially for ages and they have some properties that can be nice, e.g. they are fairly simple cores, they operate at 5V and their output pins can sink ~40mA, so you can easily e.g. drive a MOSFET gate.
The Arduino ecosystem is huge and it's great to get things up and running quickly.
Barely scratching the surface of that domain. I'm mostly enamored of enabling little automations in my other hobbies. Like moisture sensors and auto sprinklers for my indoor grow.
@bananabat, congrats on launching your game and on your beautiful write up here. It made me remember Randy Pausch‘a famous “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, better known as “The Last Lecture.” (https://youtu.be/ji5_MqicxSo). Like many others, I remember being deeply touched by it. It is ultimately being about a man reflecting on a life well lived and achieving some childhood dreams like this is part of it.
It is wonderful that you have been able to do something you find worthy in and of its self and find fulfillment here. Thank you for sharing.
I remember watching parts of this before from other sources. Thanks for linking the whole thing, my husband has never seen it so we're gonna watch it together later.
I couldn't find a comment addressing my gameplay recommendations, so apologies if this was already stated.
- Replaying shouldn't take two taps. I just want to get back into it! I now know the middle button replays, but it's not immediately obvious.
- I don't understand what the floating aliens are for. I keep trying to get them but they don't seem to do anything.
- My score doesn't stand out, it took several plays to notice it, and I still don't feel better about reaching 20 planets as opposed to two planets.
- It feels awkward that each planet has quite strong gravity when you hit it, but if you barely miss there's nothing. (This ties into the next point.)
- There's no incentive to do anything, as far as I can tell. I can wait ten minutes to rocket off to the next planet and my score is the same. Along with the previous point, maybe make the score decrease while orbiting, or make gravity weaken.
Just messed around a bit more and I realize now that the score does decrease after orbiting, but it's not obvious. Maybe make the score multiplier show decimal points and/or be more prominent.
I also discovered the autopilot button, which is fun, but I don't understand when or why I can use it. It also wasn't clear that it was a button - I thought it was some godot logo. That might just be because I know of godot but not very well.
While using the autopilot I noticed my multiplied going up, but then it drops immediately. Dropping it all at once feels bad since it's such a towering mountain to climb - maybe drop it every orbit or two (maybe drop it more frequently based on current multiplier) so you can still climb.
I don't understand what the last two options are in the options menu.
All of this is to say I had fun, and I'm glad you made this. I hope this didn't sound bad. Good job!
- UI has always been my weakest point in the sense that what seems logical to me might be puzzling to others. I've been taking notes on what's confusing to players and will implement improvements on the next go-around
- Floating aliens are just...that. I've thought about making it more obvious that they are part of the environment or just removing them altogether
- The score HUD needs to be improved if it's not giving players the satisfaction of keeping a streak. Will test a few things.
- The regular planets give you more turns and they are more present in the lower levels. I might reduce the amount of allowed turns. But in the higher levels, you'll need them if you want to rest a little bit because most of the planets will allow 3 turns at the most or only 1 turn.
- I agree that the multiplier probably needs to be more prominent.
- Autopilot gives a countdown about how many auto jumps are left. The incentive there is that it's entirely possible to keep your streak going if you're paying attention.
- LOL @ the last two options. I'll tell you the story about that. We tried to keep words to a minimum because we have a multilingual option and some terms just don't translate well. FYI, they control camera shake and camera smooth/snap, respectively. If anyone has better icon suggestions, I'm all over it.
Thank you very much. I'm glad you enjoyed the game despite some moments that gave you pause.
For context, this isn't from a player; I steadfastly refuse to run google services on any of my devices, so I'm incapable of downloading your game from the Google Play store. I'll keep an eye out for it, should you ever decide to release the .apk or host it on F-Droid!
Your personal story is nothing short of inspiring. A sincere kudos to you and your husband :) Your children are incredibly lucky to have two such productive role models, and I hope they grow up to see computers as not just tools but as friends (as it seems they were to you in childhood)
To me, computing is somewhere between a philosophy and a spirituality. I'm still very novice, but welcome to the rarefied air of technological wizardry! You had a vision, a meaning in your mind, and you manifested that into the devices of strangers. You created something wholly new and thereby opened a port from the rich inner world of bananabat &co. into the reality of our shared experiences. This capability, to me, is nothing short of miraculous. It was your combined passion and effort that seized upon such miracles to create novel spectacles. As I said: nothing short of inspiring!
Best of luck to you and your family as you continue down this journey! I wish all of you well, and who knows? Maybe in some years from now, someone will post a Show HN with their own project, their passion fueled by Slingshot Effect!
I respect that. Thank you for your very kind words and well wishes. I think creativity is simply the synthesis of all that's past and what's present around you. What we celebrate as originality is mashup. And I think that's absolutely wonderful.
I think the floating aliens are fun and add environment. I think it could be a fun way to add bonus points (or multiplier!) when hit!
There aren't many elements to the score HUD. It seems straightforward to just have a "pop up" at the top of the screen when a multiplier is increased and/or a big score increase happens. Maybe with a bit of a shake.
I don't know what "regular" planets are. Maybe different colored outlines akin to RPG item rating would be helpful.
The justification for the camera options makes sense. Maybe you could show the change when adjusted. Shake the camera or move it around when a change happens. That would at least make it more obvious, and the user wouldn't have to mess with it, play the game, and see what changes happened.
Just wanted to corroborate this. I think this feedback is spot-on! I was thinking of sharing my perspective, but that would be repetitive. This nails it!
Thank you. It's been pointed further down in the comments that this claim is not as straightforward as we intended it. There's a thing or two going on in our website, mostly with an embedded player from Bandcamp and something going on with Wordpress. Gonna fix it.
While I appreciate its simplicity, private data on the internet is messier than it sounds, and almost impossible _not_ to collect it (server logs store the ip by default for example). In particular, 13bananas.com has outbound connections to stats.wp.com (prompty blocked by uBlock Origin) and to bandcamp.com. Also, uBlock Origin seems to log access to Google Analytics through a bandcamp script.
Sonnet.io seems to be less chatty, except for the requests to Heroku.
Congrats on you game! It looks really nice, and I wish you the best of lucks!
> While I appreciate its simplicity, private data on the internet is messier than it sounds, and almost impossible _not_ to collect it
Yup 100% agree. One of the reasons I do this is that I used to work in adtech (focusing mainly on privacy, which is a complete joke in that industry, but we all know that), so in most of my projects I try to use privacy-friendly alternatives.
For instance, the Heroku requests will either use umami (without sessions/state) as well as stripping unnecessary headers/cookies from the payload from the network traffic (e.g. credentials: none). The code is available on GH.
I still want to know what's happening on my site, e.g. UX-wise, so I can fix and adjust stuff. But, so far I've never needed to know "who" is visiting vs. what are the general interactions with the content.
Just like oil/CO2 emissions, user data should be considered a burden, not an infinite resource.
Even if your expectations of adtech are already low, I can assure you that some of the shit I've heard considered acceptable is just mind-boggling, and scary.
I see what you mean, thanks for pointing all of that out. I admit that the finer points of privacy are not really my area. We only meant that we as a company don't collect or store or use the data of anyone who interacts with us.
But I wasn't paying attention to embeds and also WordPress stuff that's going on. I'll probably roll a local audio player to address that. As for WP...maybe it's a plugin I'm using. I'll look into it. We really want all our interactions to be a pull from the user. Because as a user myself, I try to avoid services and products that want to be my friend forever.
Congratulations! Game development is what got me interested in programming in the first place. Once I put my first pixel on the screen and I figured out how to interact with it blew my mind, limitless possibilities. Since the pandemic started my wife and I have published one game [0] and currently have a second one [1] in a pre-release phase (probably going to make a separate SHOW HN post once it is live).
Keep up the great work! We use Unity3D for our development
The curve is a bit steep but once the things start clicking you productivity goes through the roof. You'll be able to make game prototypes in a few short hours.
I admit that building 2D games with unity is a bit of an overkill but the fact that everything just works across different platforms makes it well worth it. I originally developed games using Java and a cross platform framework called libgdx. It was fun till you needed to implement things like cross-platform advertisements and IAPs. With unity you know that the support will be there for the foreseeable future and no other engine comes close in terms of the available free online resources.
I love the Unity asset store and I use it a lot for graphic assets. I intend to get back to Unity when I feel a little more competent and not feel like I need a whole bunch of third-party programming assets to do what I want to do.
The easiest way to learn unity (or any other new framework/engine/language) in my opinion is to recreate the project that you've already built. And you have one.
I just paid for your Android app and had a play with it and left a review. It is more polished in-game than I expected from the Google Play listing; the icon for the app looked a little bit 2009. So I was pleasantly impressed with the game itself. Great work!
Hey, looks like I'm not alone! I'm 49 and we (3 people, aged 30-49, with no prior gamedev experience) are working on an isometric sci-fi shooter-looter -- think Diablo meets Aliens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWN3l4LdTIA
Also, 800 upvotes can't lie. I wonder, which part of the premise resonates with the HN crowd: "it's never too late" or "I always wanted to make games too"?
I would think that quite a good chunk of people who go into tech (as a general domain) did so because they loved games as a kid. This is true for us and anecdotally, everyone I know who is in IT has tried their hand at making a game at one time or another.
As for "never too late": maybe when we're older, we do become aware that we are closer to the end than the beginning. Part of it is also the last few years. You don't thing the blackest of black swan events will happen until it does. So are you gonna do your best to be happy right now? Or are you gonna keep punting until the meteor comes?
Umm, I would totally buy your game. I love isometric shooters, rpgs, etc. First-person shooters, sadly, make me nauseated and barf-y within minutes. How far along are you guys in development?
Movement and gunplay are basically done and feel great. Graphics is looking pretty decent (the video is a bit outdated). Story / progression is being written and integrated at the moment; it will be text-only so no voice acting is required, which should speed things up. Some items and their stats (armor, guns, sets, etc.) are already in place, but there are no proper legendaries yet. Crafting and talents are not yet in place. Sound is completely nonexistent at this point -- we're going to try an approach without music (it may work, see No Country for Old Men).
Nice. I turned 50 this year, I created a custom Tecmo Super Bowl ROM (for original NES) with my college friends as the players and a bunch of custom graphics and mods referencing our jokes and incidents from back in the day. There is a community dedicated to the game that helped with some of it, but I definitely had to dive deep into hex editing to add all the elements I wanted.
Sorry if my post was confusing -- I created the game this year as a way of celebrating turning 50 and reconnecting with my college friends, we were all obsessed with Tecmo when it first came out in 1991.
I'm 49 and I have basically the same story you did... and also share the same secret dream to write games "one day", so I'm starting really small with a simple little 2D game in GameMaker Studio. So far it's slow going but super fun. But you've inspired me to keep going, so thanks!
I'm really enjoying it so far. It seems to fit with my mental model of making video games, which basically ended when I was 15 and writing games in MBASIC on my Heathkit (and later QuickBasic on MS-DOS, but I sort of stopped making games at that point) Obviously the language is very different and it's object-oriented, which MBASIC definitely was not, but it sort of feels... similar somehow? I can't really explain it.
Some things about the GML language are a bit odd, and sometimes it seems like people on the forums believe wrong things about it (I read more than one person complaining that you couldn't define your own functions, which is not correct, but the docs could be a lot clearer on that) But overall I'm happy enough with it.
I'm recreating a game I wrote in interpreted BASIC back in 1987 [1] and so far I've got the levels, basic player movement, simple enemy AI, and a very basic game loop. It's nothing fancy but I'm learning a lot so far.
Thanks! I think it's just a combination of the limited graphics character set on the Heathkit, plus eight years of practice (at the time) making games using it.
The stuffed animals are from my childhood, so I kept them on my childhood computer. I think they're happy there. :)
I love the rawness of games that are built by people who just want to make games. Today, we have tons of games that are made for money. Some are "fun" but missing that bit of soul.
I haven't played this, but there's something appealing from the screenshots. The flat colored backgrounds, the slightly unaligned colors, the typo on the screenshot. It's like an alternative rock band.
I'm entirely self-taught. My personal experience is this:
- Try a bunch of free engines and platforms. Depending on your son's age, this might mean starting with something like Scratch. I've played around with it myself and it's fun. It at least gives you a feel for game logic and how a game loop should feel.
- GDevelop has come a long way. My son prefers it when he's just doodling around.
- My husband prefers GameMaker Studio 2. But it's a paid program and the export modules (mobile, console, html5) are extra expenses that can add up. Also, GML is a nightmare (just my opinion).
- I use Godot Engine. It's free, lightweight, GDScript is Python-like so pretty easy to get a handle on. It's perfect for 2D development. And the teaching community is very rich.
- There's really no "x is better than y" as far as game engines, IMO...all depends on what you're trying to do and how far you are in expertise/experience. And it also comes down to what engine feels right to you.
- Start with 2D, cannot stress this enough. Make as simple a game as possible when you're starting. This also means staying away from Unity and Unreal because both are simply too much engine for a beginner.
- At some point, you're gonna have to learn how to code for real. Don't have to be a wiz...just enough to be competent.
- Be a generalist, if possible. Depending on what you want to do and/or whether you have collaborators or not...you might also need to have basic art skills. I'm a graphic designer by trade so this wasn't an issue. But I had to learn Blender because I wanted to incorporate 3D art in my games. My husband learned how to make music. I also learned video editing so I could make good trailers. Etc, etc.
- Love games. All kinds of games. I think this should've been first.
> Make as simple a game as possible when you're starting
Back when I had enough spare time to do game jams, one critical thing I learned was, once you have some idea, make it simpler. Now make it even simpler. And then, make it simpler again. Repeat that about 20 times, possibly more. Now you have something that you can possibly build and actually release, and guess what, counterintuitively, it'll be fun as hell.
Coz what makes a game fun is not the thousands of wonderful ideas you may have bolted on together, it's just a couple of things you distilled for the love of it, chiseling away, down to the core of the game mechanics, into some magical essence.
It's been frightening alright but I learned so much, and not just about game dev: lots of takeaways that apply to day-to-day development, like finding the balance between quality and getting things done, keeping things ultra-simple, understanding the value in inlining or even repeating code, finding the minimal abstraction sweet spot...
It's OK to be afraid! Turns out it also teaches that you can just let it go, go for it and enjoy the wild ride.
Guess my insecurity comes from not having any kind of programming or even math background. Esp in group game jams, I have a feeling I'd be the weakest link and everyone would yell at me.
This may not be age appropriate depending on your kid, but the (free) CS50 course for games from Harvard [1] is outstanding and accessible to someone with a beginner level of experience. It's not as intro level as something like Scratch would be, but it's very practical hands on learning with tons of resources for anyone who wants to get "serious" about game programming.
I am developer with over 20 years of experience. I have learned programming from books where computers were generally not available where I grew up.
But my son is learning programming (started when he was 6, he just turned 8 recently).
He started by goofing off with some robots programmed in visual languages. Then moved to goofing off even more in Scratch. When pandemic started we found a school that teaches programming online and they used Scratch to program Minecraft which got my son hooked up -- he likes Minecraft a lot and having it do stuff that wouldn't otherwise be possible was a huge motivation for him to learn. He is now attending a second semester in that school and they are using Kodu for some more advanced, 3d goofing off.
My son became big fan of Undertale recently and he approached me to learn to make some fan content based on Undertale. We did some research and found Undertale was made in Game Maker -- a game engine for 2d games. So this is what we just recently started learning. He is excited to finally start learning something that can be used to make professionally looking games and says that if it was good enough to make Undertale it is good enough for him:)
He also just got his own Minecraft server (ehm... Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM) and I am hoping that when he is bored with vanilla gameplay with his school friends he will want to start modding the game in some ways.
What do you use for programming in Minecraft? I tried Tinker with my son - but the process is rather tedious, you have to type in a command and an internet address to connect to with each game session, not to mention that Scratch block manipulation on iPad. Also the examples were rather limited. I don't play computer games at all myself - so I did not know what to propose to him.
GMS2 is a good engine. I also built a Minecraft server for my son. Started with an RP4 but he complained about lag so I finally just let him a Linux laptop.
We use PaperMC too. We've tried to implement GeyserMC so that his non-bedrock friends can join but so far, no love. I haven't had time to dig into why.
Very cool that you can write plugins for your kid's server!
Yeah. When he was little younger he had trouble with navigation when flying Elytra between our distant bases. In particular he made a huge tower on a remote (4k blocks) mountain and we made gunpowder farm in the middle of an ocean (7k blocks away).
So I wrote a plugin where you can save your current location with a name and you get a small overlay that tells you where you are pointing -- ie. what is saved destination closest to where you are pointing and whether it is right or left of where you point and how far (1, 2 or 3 angle brackets ).
Start with something that works, that has code, and that can be hacked on. When my kid was 9 we did the whole "decompile Minecraft" thing, and he made some pretty cool changes with no help from me. But I'm sure there are game tools with published repos that you can download and hack on. That's how I learned, except it was "typing in games from magazines" and modifying them. Starting from scratch (with "Hello World") just sucks.
Back in the very old days, early 1980s, magazines like Byte would include games in the magazine in the form of code you had to manually type in and save. The ones I did were multiple pages of pure HEX.
Later, magazines would ship with floppies that had the free software on it.
Wow, this was not a thing where I grew up. I never even saw a real pc until I was in uni. That sounds awesome. Thanks for explaining.
EDIT: Still totally fascinated by this. I asked my husband because I remembered that he had a much-beloved Spectrum when he was a kid and sure enough, he had digitized Your Sinclair issues on his iPad and he showed me several examples of games in Basic and hex. Super cool.
Note that half the time, you'd make typos and it wouldn't run. So it sounds nostalgic, but not so much.
However, debugging it helped to learn the language. :)
Dr. Dobbs Journal was probably the king of source code listings in magazine format.
Pre-Internet, there were some remarkable mass-distribution Unix magazines with significant source code for utilities: Unix Review and Unix World. Even today, the back issues would be useful.
I remember lusting over the AT&T 3B Unix machines advertised in those, but never could afford one. So I waited until VAX Unix in uni (the arts dept. had an unused one), then SCO and Linux.
So I can see how you can debug BASIC when you're doing the magazine thing and it doesn't run. But what about hex...how did people even find where they made had typos?
Yes, remember friends typing in games from a magazine on a zx81 around 1983. Horribly slow with the membrane keyboard. And then someone would touch the table, the 16Kb memory extension would disconnect and all work would be gone...
Logo can be a great place to start, it's good for simple games because each game element can be a turtle you can control relative to its own position. Logo interpreters suitable for simple game development include turtleSpaces https://turtlespaces.org
By the way, do you have a blog or a github account?
I am quite comfortable finding useful information and lately I have collected a good amount of game development libraries and resources that could help me become a better programming adventurist.
We have a github that I plan to populate with the useful bits and pieces that I've written along the way. Will come back here when I stop procrastinating.
Mind sharing please? I am in the lookout for game dev libraries and resources as well. I am at the unity stage now and i dont much to share in exchange tho. Thank you!
Looks cool, bud! I was in a similar situation a while back and published a game too. It never made any money, mostly because I didn't market it too hard, but it was one of those milestones that I accomplished just to say that I did. :)
Heads up! You misspelled 'distractions' in your screenshot.
I'm going through a similar phase myself spurred on by the pandemic (games are, after all, why I started programming in the first place).
I'm continuously amazed by how complex even simple games can be, especially if you're not using one of the big game engines. It's incredibly easy to get sidetracked or over-engineer a certain aspect. It's made me realize just how tough shipping a game - so congratulations on that. It's a huge feat.
Great read. I always want to start in my project (game) but something comes up and I push it. I quit my job so I can focus a bit more on things I love. I have installed all the dev tools and started working on the story line. Work always got in the way. Finally I get to fuckin do it. My kid is working on the characters and they look dumb as shit but it brings such interesting side to the story.
I'm super glad that you're doing the thing you love. My son helped out in game dev. He's credited as "best ideas ever" and he is also demanding a cut of profits.
Thank you for both the inspiration and distraction! As a fellow-traveler (similar age, similar situation), I completely empathize with the struggle needed to accomplish something like this.
Bought!
Also: great set of credits including the tutorials and such, and waves to fellow Canadians
Wow, as someone who hit their mid thirties and basically decided the same thing congratulations!
Do you have a next one in mind? Or are you going to see what the reception for this one is first?
I must admit I focused on game jams to start, I've tried going down this road a few times before with little success. Having managed to complete a jam game has given me enough confidence to try and build something small which I can slowly add to. My aim is to have a playable, if very likely ugly prototype ready by the end of the month. Followed by a bunch of requisite refining and iteration.
Thank you. We have a pipeline of ideas: some of them are pretty big in scope so will have to wait. Some of them are technically challenging so we'd have to level up in skill to bring them to life.
I am afraid of game jams lol and I applaud people who enjoy it! Maybe I'll get brave enough to join one someday.
I'd say give it a go if you're feeling adventurous with the goal being just participating and maybe learning something. That's what I aimed for in my first jam and it ended up being a great experience when I had a bunch of fun collaborating and getting positive feedback from people for a game I'd made.
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next then!
I've never played that but huh, it's freaky how the mechanic and game loop are similar. There's even food flying around! Thanks for showing this to me, I will probably crib some stuff for an update. It's really cool. But I hope that floating baby finds a safe planet!
Congratulations. Age is just a number. In fact, you are probably a lot better at finding the right resources with your experiences in life, socially or professionally.
> And since then, I've been a copywriter, graphic designer, business owner, immigrant,
Sounds like your skill-set is very well rounded. From my experience, coding was the easiest part, marketing and narrowing down the game logic to what's really needed/fun is always so hard. Congrats!
If you want to exchange ideas or just chat about your experience making indie games, I'm running occasional pairing/rant sessions, where everyone can just call me and chat: https://sonnet.io/posts/hi/
If you're interested in a chat, give me a shout! Otherwise, good luck! It makes me so happy to see people building stuff like this. Thank you.
I just downloaded your game and started giggling. This is why I love indie games: the stuff you experience can be fucking sublime, no matter how long or how little it lasts.
The artwork is ~ chef’s kiss ~ .
Found myself truly watching out for that knife. I guess humans have a deep-seated fear of stabby things.
If you ever feel that this game could be expanded, that would be awesome. This is so much more fun than something like Doodle Jump, imo.
Congrats. Visual esthetic is very clean. The music is really nice as well, could be a programming background sound-track even.
I am, actually, in the same age category and have suddenly realized that I am super excited to understand, explore and (eventually) produce something that relies on 3D game engines. Not necessarily a game, but something leveraging the game/3D/ Meta/Multi/Omniverse tooling that is available for free/cheap. Watching Borderland game's creators explaining how the game is really produced on Unreal engine and knowing all the same tools are available to me for free is just mind-blowing.
Did you find any community on the web to hang out at with this new focus? I saw a couple (itch, etc) but I am curious if there are secret gems out there.
Also, I am curious if you leveraged any of the commercial tools that are targeted at pro-crowd but have free/cheap licenses? Something that is an overkill for your development needs but turned out to be a great return on (time/money) investment anyway. Unreal is that for me, so I am looking for other gems.
The first game I made was a Breakout clone in Unity -- only rivalled in popularity among baby game devs by Pong clones.
I like Unity, it's free for a super small indie. I liked learning C#. However, when I reached the point where I was thinking of more sophisticated functionality, I started using a lot of 3rd-party development plugins (all so wonderful in the Unity store) and they were becoming a giant crutch.
Now don't get me wrong, I am a fan of NOT remaking the wheel and I'm a total code snippet learner. However, I don't have a foundation in math or science. In the beginning, something as simple as rotation_speed = PI was utterly confounding. So I switched to Godot, which uses a Python-like scripting language. Far easier to learn and awesome for 2D. Also, the lack of a "store" with readily-available packaged solutions forced me to understand what in the actual fuck I was trying to do. It's free as in speech and beer.
I actually learned Blender much earlier because it's closer to graphic design than game dev. It'll be useful if we ever do 3D or VR.
And yes, maple syrup is a superfood. I will not be taking questions on that topic.
@bananabat This is awesome, your write up put the biggest freaking smile on my face. Like you, it is something I've always wanted to do and put off, now 43 and still got to get back to my dream. I love that you've got your first game out, that is epic! - I'm off to go grab a copy, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you release next!
Thank you for reading it. I was a bit hesitant framing our experience in such personal terms because...huh...I don't know, I'll figure it out after a bit. Maybe because I'd get my feelers hurt if it didn't resonate with people?
I have to get better at being okay with sharing what I feel like sharing and also being okay with whatever I get back.
I love it! I'm finding it really hard to find the time, motivation, and focus to sit down and learn the prerequisites required to accomplish something truly challenging later in life (I'm in my late 40's too). Congratulations on shipping your first game! That is a tremendous accomplishment and you should be very proud!
Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, it really is hard. Time and motivation are rare currencies. There is just so much shit to do in "life-ing." I hope that you get to do the things that make you happy.
So, you've published your first game. What's your goal? Is it to make money from this game or do you just want people to play it? Are you going to make a second game? If so, will the goal be any different?
In an ideal world, we'd want to be sustained by our creative efforts. Not be a gazillionaire out of it, just make a living in a way that is pleasurable and inspiring. This is something I wish for everyone, btw.
I hope that people will play our game so that we can keep doing this. But maybe they won't, that's ok too. I've been discussing this very thing with my husband and he said something that was inspiring to me: our dream and our income stream don't have to be the same thing.
In gamer metaphor, we know our main quest...but sometimes you need to gear up before you can tackle the more challenging stuff. And so I've never minded the side quests. :-) The path will reveal itself.
Congrats on shipping a game. I'm almost 40 and have started so many engines and infrastructure projects that I'm looking forward to retiring early to make games. Carry on!
I am 48 and I am finally learning machine learning with neural networks.
I have made some money on crypto and I left my programming job 5 years ago. I have had some reservations, like can I still learn new stuff, would I be efficient enough with it to make anything valuable, how can I compete with the young guys. And I still don't have answers, the project seems to crawl so very slowly. But I enjoy the work.
I've gone through the same thought (and emotional) process. I guess if you're enjoying it and it brings you happiness, that is the best reason to do it.
We have some advantages that only accrue with age. It seems you have a nest egg that lets you do what you want to do, that's a major thing. Also, you have a professional, social and experiential foundation that serves you in good stead.
I'm here just to congrat with you, I love everything you wrote in your write up, so inspiring! What you did is something small but so meaningful! No big dreams startup, simply live your life living its up-side-downs and loving that and after some time, doing something simple but joyful!
So simple, but to these days, so great!
So glad to see that there are more and more people taking on new things whatever their age. Hope you find time for game development, eventually. It's fun.
Thanks for sharing your story. I am a similar age and a couple of weeks ago I took the somewhat scary step of quitting my CTO job to pivot to indie game development. Can't wait to get started after my notice period ends. It helps to know that i'm not alone starting game dev later in life :)
The game looks similar to Rocket Bunnies (which I think might not be available anymore or isn't maintained since the developer has closed shop): https://youtu.be/m0fuRys9plo
This is very inspiring - I started out life as an artist and then became a programmer in my late 20's. I'm now 37 and feel that I could have been a game developer but that I'm a bit too old to start.
I don't think it's ever too late to start. And really, even just a few years back, barriers to entry for anyone who wanted to be an indie dev were a bit high.
I was born and raised in a 3rd world country. And while we had consoles and devices thanks to being in Asia, hardly anyone had a computer. I first touched a PC when I was in university. Before that, personal computers might as well have been alien technology.
Nowadays, there are lots of free/affordable game engines to choose from. Soooo many game devs who are also great teachers (I'm not one of them) and they put out a lot of content.
If you're an artist who knows how to code, you are already way ahead of the game. So many indie developers are hampered by being a specialist in one domain or another. Give it a go!
Sure thing!
BTW, I upgraded and tried your game and it's great! LOVE the authentic indie DIY backstory -- and "No ads / IAP / data collection of any kind" -- and the game itself is charming and challenging enough to make for a fun diversion. An absolute winner for casual iOS game. Hope it's a huge success and you go on to make lots more!
Thank you very much. You're not the only one who's been surprised about the iOS 15 thing. We'll be more mindful about version compatibility with the next update. We're not using any cutting-edge features here, so we probably don't need to set compatibility to the latest os version.
Nevertheless, I appreciate that you tried our game even with some UX friction and if I could impose on your kindness a little more, please consider leaving our game a rating and a review if you have extra time.
great story and the game looks cool from the screen shots and videos in the app store. wonder if you have plans to introduce a free version with in-app purchases. bet you will get more users.
You know, we've considered it and we've been approached by a couple of publishers in the "hyper casual" space to go the route of free-but-with-IAPs. First the terms of industry-standard contracts are onerous. And second...well, I personally love casual games. And I never minded paying a reasonable amount for games I play. And then there are games like Two Dots that I really, really liked but the endless monetization just gets to be too much.
This is just our preference. We don't have anything against ad-supported or IAP-supported games. We just feel that there is still a pool of mobile players out there who don't mind purchasing a casual game outright.
And who knows, we might decide to collaborate with a publisher on a future game. We'll see what the future brings.
I can only say anecdotally from my own experience, but the games we had listed for a price got 1% or less of the downloads of the same game after we made it free. People complain about free with IAP, but the $ shows otherwise.
Mysterydip, how do the sales compare of a game with IAP vs one with an upfront cost? (I ask as it is conceivably that fewer than 1% of people who get the IAP version pay, in which case you've made as much either way).
I've not done IAP, just ads and amazon underground (which has since been cancelled). My games weren't geared for IAP. Underground by far made us the most. To be sure there's companies squeezing every last drop psychologically out of its free users, and it irks me to no end. Games are supposed to be fun.
I started out same as you, charge a dollar or two for a quality game seems like a fair trade. But I can't count how many conversations I had with people who would balk at 99 cents while either holding their $5 daily latte or paying another $10 for gems/energy for the "free" game they were playing. It's frustrating but the mentality of the mobile market. There are good/ethical and bad ways to approach it, though. I wouldn't do anything rash with your first game; let it be as-is out there for a while and try different ways to advertise or work with user feedback and see how it develops.
I was reading about how the mobile game space has taken a totally different path from PC/Console games. Players are largely onboard with the "value" of even the most casual games on the latter platforms. But there is now a lot of resistance to mobile games that aren't free...even though a player's regular spend on an IAP-monetized game might actually exceed the cost of even a subscription-type model.
I meant kind of trial to buy model, not ad-supported per se.
There may be a lot of users who might give a try to the trial version which may just be a skimmed down version, if they like it they'll buy! I think a lot of people are afraid to spend money (no matter how little) and then get disappointed (not saying this game is disappointing)
Not sure if I'm the only one - I loathe games and gaming in general, think that it is a lifewasting activity mostly... But I love game development, engine development to be precise.
Mhm...I love games so I'm not sure how to respond lol.
Ok, but maybe I can relate in a way...I love cultivating pot. For real, my other dream is to be a boutique grower one day when regulations aren't so red-tapey. But I really don't care for it. I don't like being sleepy. Just gimme a beer.
You're not the only one. Somehow games are worse than other forms of storytelling: netflix, tv, movies, reading. Maybe this always happens to the newest form of entertainment, maybe it's because unlike the other forms your playthrough won't be the same as my playthrough.
In the end all our learning, experience, and content consumption is wiped away. Only what we produce remains, and most of that remains only a little while longer. Still, that doesn't provoke a mass of memoirs from the majority of mankind, so it's okay to sit back, relax, and enjoy entertainment.
Thank you for sharing your story, it warms me up to hear about people pursuing their dreams - I'm excited to see what games you develop for us. Give us more to play!
Thanks for the godot engine tip. > 45 here, always wanted to try my hand building a game but no framework clicked as godot. The getting started guides are easy on me.
Nice. I'm 42 and in an undergrad program (my first) for a BFA in interaction design after being a web developer for 10 years. Feels great to make moves.
Interaction Design, or IxD, is a design discipline that deals heavily in visual communication like graphic design, but focuses on back-and-forth communication, typically in a software GUI. Much like Graphic Design, adding beauty and fun are merely tools in a much more important skillset: interaction designers should also have a good sense for users' goals, workflows and communication dispositions; using layout, form, and animation to communicate meaning instead of verbose language-dependent labels that add to cognitive load and disrupt focus; how to form interfaces to match users workflows rather than the developer's mental model of the process; etc.
Many of the UI practices developers have absorbed through osmosis– such as grouping buttons with like actions and having them change color when you click on them— have their roots in pre-computer design disciplines. While they often work ok, they often aren't optimal, and an interaction designer can make your users lives' much better. For example, I might look at buttons grouped because they perform a technically similar function and think "what are the user's goals here? What likenesses should gestalt communicate for them? Do the other elements nearby alter the meaning of their grouping?"
Or I might see a standard modal where an alert pops up if the form fails validation because it uses an API which can't yield real-time feedback. Error popups are a big emotional disruption— like getting pulled over and given a warning rather than being redirected with a well-placed road sign. They also add cognitive load because they have to read it AND find the problem fields, the extra click can take time, and dealing with all of that can totally kill a user's flow and concentration. If it's common user stumbling block, I might make the button border and problem field switch to the same color and rapidly shake horizontally like a head shaking 'no.' The emotional rebuff and interruption to the user's flow are significantly reduced. It will drastically improve that user's experience.
While many technical folks consider these trivial issues, good interaction design is consistently one of the reasons folks will shell out serious skrilla for proprietary, less technically sound, less secure, and less flexible commercial software and why open-source alternatives will remain alternatives for everything but developer and technician focused software. One of my primary goals is to ply these skills in the FOSS scene.
I usually post gifs on Twitter (same username), but I've been doing more web dev recently. 2016-2018 are full of abandoned prototypes. Finished stuff and ludum dare entries get posted to my website at (username).com
Thank you! The "too late" is so pervasive in our culture but I'm beginning to see a definite trend of people who just want to do their own thing, no matter their age. It's heartening.
Yes, someone else pointed it out and that amateur-hour moment is gonna drive me crazy until we can push another update. Thank you for paying attention and caring enough to let me know.
Perfect. I just bought it just because of that. (I might have bought it otherwise to if I remembered it tomorrow, but this was enough to get me to do it now :-)
One interesting note was that TempleOS which is called a religious OS had a Commadore64 structure and it was apparently easy to make games on it. You mentioned learning unity, the old game programmers would make ISA games that had no OS overhead, ran on all hardware that supported the instructions which happens less when the engines are abstractions that are designed to run on more abstractions like the OS, which of course costs performance, has more bugs, and basically filters your intentions, as well as every version of the engine, OS and other factors a game developer can't control will degrade their software through no fault of their own.
Thank you very much for these links. One reason why I quickly decided to move away from Unity is that it's such a "big" program to make a relatively simple 2D game. I guess the level of abstraction that modern game engines provide is a double-edged sword in that while it is more accessible to users without a background in programming, it also obscures most of what's going on under the hood. So now game devs (as well as game consumers) accept that modern games have a certain amount of overhead that you live with. And bugs. And incompatibilities.
I moved to Godot because you can totally configure it to suit your needs. You can compile the engine yourself, rewrite the editor, etc. When exporting our game to iOS and Android, I was a bit disconcerted that it was around 100MB...and it's just a jumping game! I tried to pare down all the graphical assets to be as light and as undemanding as possible; but ultimately, a good chunk of that was overhead.
There were instructions on how to strip away all the 3D parts of the engine and just recompile...but I chickened out. Not confident enough at the moment but I'm learning. I might try doing that when we push the next update.
Yes, the continued abstractions take away performance and filter or corrupt the software often of no fault of the game designer. It is unfortunate, Jonathan Blow's video is amazing and he does streams on twitch, I remember they asked him what he thought of the M1, his response was that we can make programs 100x faster today but nobody wants to program it, and the video talks about we trade time to program for lower performance and ease of use. Remember the times when games shipped completed, and now you expect it to take a year to update and it constantly does so on consoles? Every game is an early release now.
Tell me what you think of the video, I think its very relevant.
Thank you. I just remember the early days of mobile gaming when FB had some kind of stranglehold on what passed for social media...and every game wanted you to let everyone on FB know that you successfully raised your 100th chicken. It was some bullshit.
More than playing video games, though, what I wanted to do as a kid was to MAKE games. I still remember punching in a borrowed Mario Bros cartridge for the first time, pressing START and having a freaking epiphany. How cool was it that someone MADE this?? To heck with being an astronaut, when I grew up, I was going to do THIS. I knew it with all the certainty of 8-year-old me. But you know how it goes: like most childhood dreams, I put this one on a shelf and gradually left it behind. I didn't become an astronaut either (in case you were wondering).
What I did was drop out of university in my third year. And since then, I've been a copywriter, graphic designer, business owner, immigrant, stay-at-home spouse, and for a long time, the stay-at-home parent. And it's been great. Life with all its up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A's...it's all been wonderful.
"Hold up," you might say, if you're still reading this. "Why are you telling us all this? Boring."
Right. Let me get to it. I'm 48 and if there's a lesson that has been inescapable these past two years is that we may not see tomorrow. So, I've decided to focus on happiness in the here and now. Carpet diem, as my kid used to say when he was little. And you know one thing that has added to my happiness? Dusting off my dream, sitting my ass down and finally learning how to be a game developer. And happier still? I've done this with my husband.
So we've published our first mobile game. It's called "Slingshot Effect" and it's available on App Store or on Google Play. It's an infinite jumper that's easy to just pick up and play. Perfect for commutes or if you're stuck in a waiting room somewhere. It's a paid app because we feel strongly that the level of monetization in the casual game space is just...ugh...it's bad. Thanks for listening, I really appreciate it.
TLDR: When I was a kid, I wanted to make video games. And now that I'm kind of old, my husband and I made one.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slingshot-effect/id1537916631?...
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thirteenba...