The art of subtraction

For my dream game I wanted it to have everything. Immersive world-building, multiple branching storylines with meaningful choices, epic soundtrack, memorable heros and villians, references to books and history, unique art style, and more. I guess we’re allowed to indulge ourselves with wishful thinking sometimes. But for a solo developer, one has to start in the realm of the possible.

My first game, Luxiana Flight of the Witch, a 2D side-scrolling shooter, was actually the result of a series of compromises and subtractions.

Originally, I wanted to make a 2D Castlevania style action game. The good thing about this type of game is that there’re plenty of video tutorials online and I was able to implement the game mechanics like jumping and camera follow without much issue.

But soon I found a problem. I was just a beginner at pixel art drawings. While I managed to draw the main character and all the different frames for animating actions such as running and jumping, when I put it all together, the animation looked awkward and laughable. I quickly realized that this was an obstacle that I couldn’t overcome easily. Maybe in the future I could become a decent pixel artist with tons of practices, but for now it wasn’t the hill that I was ready to die on. So I ditched the platformer concept and changed it to a 2D shooter, which was much easier on the animation side.

For a shooting game, I wanted to implement a shop system between the stages, so that the player can buy health potions or power-ups before the next stage. This required me to learn about how to make UI in the game engine, which, not surprisingly, was very different than how I used to make UI components on the web. Pretty soon I started feeling demotivated while trying to create the shop UI, so I reduced the scope of my plan and ditched the shop idea all together.

Having to throw away stuff is not a good feeling. But one thing that I learned about being a solo game developer is that, getting things done is much more important than making things beautiful. For the first game, I’d rather have a functioning bicycle than a broken car.

Going solo

How far can a person go when all alone? Probably not very far. I didn’t feel like going to the gym when I had no gym buddy; I didn’t like travelling unless I travel together with someone. I’m alway more motivated when doing things with a group of friends. The peer pressure, the camaraderie, the increased specialization - all these are wonderful factors that can potentially push a difficult project to completion.

When I had an idea for a game, my first thought was to find friends who might be interested. I know how to program, so I sought artists and other other programmers from the people I knew. I naively thought this could be like forming a club of like-minded people, working together towards a common goal.

That was not the case.

I soon learned that other people have different priorities and agendas. Interest doesn’t mean commitment. It’s hard to keep momentum going after the initial interest fades and the tedious and difficult task of actually making things begins, and the “club” soon falls apart.

Unless one’s extremely lucky that one can find someone who’s truly passionate about the game idea, or unless one’s very rich, going solo might be most viable option, at least initially.

I don’t think I’m good at being a solo developer. I lack self-discipline. I have no artistic talent. I’m disorganized. But if this is the only way forward, I guess I’ll take this path.

The time I enjoyed wasting

Throughout my high school and university years, I enjoyed playing video games. Each game brought me great fun in many unique ways, some were competitive and intellectually challenging, some had deeply touching stories, some were nice distractions that could take one’s mind off of stressful school life for a moment.

Sometimes I had ideas popping up in my head about making my own game, but I didn’t know anything about making games, so the ideas just stayed as ideas, and were later forgotten.

Later after I’d started working, I felt something was missing. All the activities that were supposed to be fun and memorable - going to parties, travelling, finding new restaurants, buying different stuffs - were certainly good things to experience, but I felt a vague long of something different, something that can accumulate, something meaningful, something I can call my own.

So I picked up game development. I knew creative endeavors like this were hard. I never set any explicit goals for myself, and I still spent way to time on playing video games than making my game. But as long as I made a little of of progress now and then I’d be satisfied. I wasted a lot of time on trying out different engines and prototyping failed ideas, just like how I wasted a lot of time playing games. But that’s okay, for the time I enjoyed wasting … is not wasted.

Contact Info

Email: henryzhudemon@gmail.com