I want to make a game

helaur.

Let me tell you a story.

Ever since I was a wee lad, around 12 years old, I wanted to make a game. My game dev journey started with my 7th grade writing class. My teacher gave us an elective project in which we could create pretty much anything we wanted. I decided to make a video game, so I learned about the Blender game engine (which yes, Blender did have a game engine at the time, it does not anymore). It had a block coding system that was friendly to someone like me who knew nothing about programming but still wanted to make something rather simple. The game was just a little walking simulator, with a first-person character controller, a simple mountain terrain, a couple trees, distance fog, and a sword on the ground that you could pick up. My friend came up with the name Survival: Priminal cuz I told him I wanted to make it a survival-sandbox game.

I had many other ideas that I wanted to implement into the game, mostly being inspired by Minecraft. But after the project was due, I didn't end up touching it again. And this was to become a running theme in the years to come.

This didn't discourage me at the time. It hadn't even come across my mind. I just moved on to the next thing. 

For two years, I had fun making games. I moved to Unity, learned C#, learned a lot about programming 2D games, and tried my hand at creating 2D art assets. I brainstormed games with friends, which I found to be the most fun part, and I tried turning those ideas into reality. But again and again, I would have that initial drive to work on a project, and after a few weeks, the fire would fizzle out. I became jaded, putting this idea in my head that if I couldn't finish a game, then I was not cut out for making games. 

Then that few weeks of motivation on a project turned into two weeks. Then that two weeks turned into one week. Then as I went through high school, I couldn't even look at the Unity Editor without feeling this cavernous pit in my stomach. I felt like a failure.

Today, I've become more conscious of the egotistical attachments that I've made in the past and how they affect me. That weaselly little phrase was dictating my life...

"I am..."

I am not disciplined.

I am not able to finish a game.

I am lazy.

I am not cut out for making games.

I am not a real game developer.

I am a failure.

When I was a high schooler, I truly believed these statements were just plain reality. I saw the kinds of games solo indie developers with 10+ years of experience were making and compared them to my own. It made my creations small and meaningless. I deluded myself into thinking the games I were making this whole time weren't "real" games. They were just "things" I made.

I am none of the things listed above. I am nothing but an observer to the world around me and a decision-maker. It is my mind that takes my observations and tries to piece them together into a coherent idea, one with connotation and meaning, one with place and purpose, in order to abstract and make sense of the complexities of the world. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it's what your brain naturally just does. But you have to recognize that the those meanings and classifications and hierarchies and purposes that your mind assigns to things aren't real, and they shouldn't control your attitude or your decision-making. When you constantly live your life to confirm your preconceptions of yourself and the world, you will never change and you will never grow.

Today

I've been getting back into game dev as of a couple years ago, very, very slowly. While I am aware of the role my ego plays, I still have a long way to go and a lot of tangles to unknot as far as actually separating myself from my ego. I still get that sinking feeling when I open Unity, albeit a little more diluted now. But a couple weeks ago, I made a little walking simulator. It actually looked a lot like Survival: Priminal, but I made more detailed terrain, added foliage like grass and flowers, a water shader, and I made my first third-person character controller.

The inspiration for this came from a game concept that dawned upon me after painting these compositions in Krita:

The actual call-to-action though came from this YouTube video I found of a probably-AI-generated (or at the very least, totally plagiarized) sci-fi painting with ambient music playing in the background and a sort of story-starter title:

The aesthetic of this imagery is something I would love to capture within the game. Cold, lonely and drab, but simultaneously colorful and fantastical; mysterious and alien, but also familiar.

So what's the game actually about?

Here's the elevator pitch:

The Imperium has conquered the Milky Way Galaxy and is looking for new frontiers to colonize. They've found a viable location for a settlement on the fourth planet orbiting the star they have dubbed Vestus in the Andromeda Galaxy. A fleet of pioneers are sent to Vestus-4 and instructed to send a message back to the Imperium when they have successfully landed and settled the colony. Many years pass, and the Imperium receives the message at the instructed time. The Imperium then sends a military fleet to confirm the stability of the colony and ensure its allegiance to the Imperial state.

The main character (who I will refer to as MC) is one of the soldiers serving the Imperium that gets deployed to Andromeda. They are a loyal subject of the Imperium, raised for the sole purpose of military service. They will die for their nation. A perfect candidate to send to unknown territory. Their fleet arrives in orbit around Vestus-4, and before they can even start an entry burn, they get shot down by an unknown barrage. MC is one of only a few to secure an emergency escape pod, as many were destroyed in the attack. When they land on the planet's surface, they are greeted with vast emptiness interrupted by massive chasms and alien structures.

It is MC's duty to find their surviving platoon members, discover the mysteries of this alien world, destroy whatever opposing force shot them down, and complete their mission for the Imperium.