The first step into game development is to make your own game. But where do you start and what do you build? You can’t build your game without finding the answers to these questions. In this post, we are going to break down the process you can follow to build your own game.
Step1: Learn a game engine
You can pick any game engine for that matter. Unity and Unreal are the top game engines and are free to use. I personally would suggest Unity as the game engine to begin with as its tiny bit easy to learn than Unreal.
Step 2: Scope Your First game right.
Learning a game engine is just the tip of the iceberg. You need to be able to find ideas and understand the tasks that go into developing a game.
Most new developers try to make games they have played. What you must understand is, games like DOTA, Witcher are made by group of developers in a span of years.
So, what should be the scope of your first game? It should be a minimum viable product. What I mean by that is the game should have a simple action, with simple control and should be fun to play. An example of a game like that is Flappy bird. I am not asking you to make a flappy bird game. You should be able to come up with your own idea.
Step3: Coming up with an idea for your game.
This part may sound simple but it’s actually difficult to come up with an idea that you can make into a game. We have come up with process to generate idea for your game. You can use this method to get ideas for your game.
Remember the very important part of a game idea is it should be fun. If you make a game that no one wants to play and is not fun then probably you have failed to make a game.
Step4: Prototyping and playtesting
Every good product has to go through the prototype phase. The faster you can get your prototype up and going the faster you can validate your idea. No matter what your idea is, if you cannot get a prototype up within a week then maybe you should consider dropping the idea and start with a new one.
The next process is to test your prototype and get feedback. One of the major mistakes that new developers do is to test with friends and family. Well, it’s a good way to test a product but you won’t get genuine feedback. You should hire a professional play tester for this task if you are serious about your game.
Step 5: Polish and release
That’s right, no matter how the game is, you should publish it. The experience of publishing and marketing your game will teach you a lot about the game industry out there. Most people believe the phrase “build it they will come”. That’s not true. Marketing is as important as developing your game.
You have all the things required to make your first game, now the only thing is to get started.