An intro to Indie Game Development

The Development Practice course was a great introduction to the Indie Game Development degree, letting me take another look into practices I have already adopted as part of my professional career. It introduced me to new practices, ideas and a ton of research topics. Without going into specifics I got to learn how to use Blender, Unreal Engine, gained more experience with Unity, got to design more games, learned about creativity and how to harness and apply it and so much more.

However, I had to restructure my schedule to account for the time I needed to do the research and writing needed for the course. Thankfully, this has not been a significant issue due to the flexibility my employer gives me. The additional time I took off work allowed me to restructure my routine so that I can cope with my day job, Development Practice course and personal life.

During the course, I felt like I didn't have enough feedback on my blog posts and reflections, which lead me to question the quality of my work. I had to look elsewhere, for a non-authoritative source of feedback to ensure my work for both the blog posts and the final case study video are of good quality. I have already fed that critique back through our student representative and hope to see improvements in the future.

Ultimately, I became more aware of my own abilities and was able to refine my goals through reflective writing in this course. This makes me feel better prepared and more excited for my next step in my journey to an indie game developer 😊.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Next steps

The next course in the Indie Game Development degree is called Co-Creative Design & Development Practice. We will be grouped in teams and will have to work together to design and develop a game (or a creative app) with up to 4 other students. This is be an exciting opportunity for collaborating with others since I didn't have the chance to do so in the Development Practice course. I will also be able to contribute my project management and collaboration skills from my Software Engineering career and help the rest of the team succeed.

The topics we can choose from are Automation, Accessibility, AI/Machine Learning and Immersive Technology. The most directly related to games are Automation, AI and Immersive Technology so I would like to focus on them. I already have some ideas around automation or Virtual Reality games.

Additionally, I am excited to work on a single project as this will present me with new challenges I can learn from.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Final project ideas

I have been thinking about my final project since the start of the Development Practice course. One of the ideas I had during the Global Game Jam ideation session seemed like a good fit for a final project. The topic for the game jam was Lost and Found the idea is that the player would be controlling a magical item (sword or a trinket) that is discovered by an adventurer. They start travelling together and the magical item aids the adventurer in their adventure until ultimately they perish to the difficult magical creatures they face. After many years another adventurer comes by and finds the magical item. The magical item learns something new from every adventurer and gains even more ways to support the adventurer in their travels.

I think it is a cool idea for a game, however, I still need to prototype it and check its feasibility.

References

Epic Games. 2021. Unreal Engine. [Software]

The Blender Foundation. 2021. Blender. [Software]

Unity Technologies. 2021. Unity. [Software]