I have completed my first video game and I feel quite satisfied about the result.
First, let me tell you why I decided to start making games. I’m a person that has many creative interests, I like making music, I like drawing, I like coding. I have a college degree in computer science, and I have worked as a programmer for a few years, and never stopped even though it isn’t my job anymore, so coding feels quite natural to me, almost like speaking a second language. But for music and drawing, it is really hard for me to actually sit down and just do it. So a few years ago, I came to the realization that I need a concrete project to get going, I can’t just work on something without a goal. As a gamer myself, it became quite obvious that making a game could be a great way of combining my three favorites things into a single project.
In the last few years, I read a lot and watched many videos on the subject. I also started many projects, most of them ending up being abandoned before being completed. So I decided that I should give myself a realistic goal, which is to make a small and relatively simple game, but to completely finish it and to make it available on the internet for other people to try.
The game is called “It’s raining words”, and as you may guess, words are falling from the sky like rain. This is a typing game, so the goal is to type the words before they reach the bottom of the screen and disappear. The game is quite minimalist in itself, there is no story or progression, it is really meant to be played casually. This allowed me to keep the scope small enough to make it possible to complete the project in a relatively short time.
It took about a year to make, in-between my “real” job and other life stuff, but I managed to do it. It has been an interesting experience, and quite different from what I had so far with my other incomplete games. The main reason for this is that when you make something just for yourself, without caring about making it a usable product, many things are avoided. Quality of life features and other kinds of polishing may not feel missed when you know exactly how to use that tool that you made, but for anyone else, such incompleteness is not enough.
So in order to make a product that I could show to people, I had to do stuff that I barely did on my previous projects. I needed to test the game more, to make sure that there was as less bugs as possible in the final product, so that people don’t get frustrated by a game that is not able to do what it promises. It is quite an unnatural thing to do, because nobody wants to fail, and making your own program crash, is a fail, so you instinctively avoid doing things that could make the game crash. So it becomes a battle with your own mind in trying to accept your failings in order to make progress.
I also added accessibility features, such as making a clean interface that could be navigated through with both the keyboard and mouse. I also included features to remove superfluous moving objects, to make the text bigger, to slow down the gameplay, to change the color of the text and background, etc. These kind of features are often neglected for such small projects, especially when the developers don’t suffer from disabilities themselves, but I tried to add as much as was reasonably possible. I wasn’t much aware of this subject until 1-2 years ago when I started watching videos about game development and I was quite impressed by how people with various disabilities manage to find ways to play games despite their limitations. And all of this is made much easier when developers take the time to add a few relevant settings in their game. So while I may not need these features myself, I still put some energy into it in hope that it can make a difference for someone.
Even though I consider myself an artist, I don’t have much patience when trying to make things pretty. But to make a product that looked interesting to others, I had to make an effort. Because as a consumer of video games myself, I know that the first impression is very important. Such good impression is obtained by having nice graphics and colors, and also by making the product easy to use. So I made a consistent theme for the whole game with controls of similar sizes and similar colors. I made sure that the text presented was as simple and short as possible to not overwhelm the players. I had to make sure that the game was the easiest possible to get into and to understand. It wasn’t that easy, since I’m the kind of person that often give more details than needed. But I think I managed to do it well, considering the wall of text that initially was the “How to play” menu.
I decided on making the game free, the main reason being that since it is my very first game, and a very small one, I couldn’t justify it to myself to charge money for it. I consider this game as a gateway toward something bigger, a tangible proof that I can progress in this field. Even if only a few people play it, or even if only a few people like it, my goal has been achieved. It is the confirmation that I can do it again, maybe even make something bigger and better.
At the time of writing this, I didn’t receive much feedback about the actual game, and I don’t know if I will get any later either. But I don’t really feel a need for such validation, because I did the best I could with this project. To me, it is like a finished painting, it did for me what it had to, I expressed what I wanted to express, so it doesn’t matter if anyone connects with it, because I did. So, mission accomplished, and now I can start another project (I already did).
You can access the game’s page on itch.io through the link below.
It’s Raining Words by KrocKMakesGames