Ra'ad Aldakhil

Time for a New Challenge

I have been thinking lately about how I can improve on my ability as a game developer and on my game design skills, and hoping to avoid tutorial hell, rather than just reading the many many books available on game design right off the bat I deviate from the usual way I practice a skill and instead take a more active approach.

A few months ago I stumbled on an article about Rami Ismail’s “Game a Week” challenge and thought this would the perfect way to push myself to pump out those first few dozen bad games that are inevitable for every beginner and to get more accustomed with the Godot engine. What better way to get experience in a game engine and in game design than making a ton of games in a short, defined time-frame.

To summarize the “Game a Week” challenge:

Now, although I find the challenge very exciting, I am also aware of how much free time outside of my full-time job is available to me. So as to not burn out from the challenge I’ll allow myself to extend the timeline from 1 Game per 1 Week to 1 Game per 2 Weeks. The hope is to give each game the amount of time and thinking it needs for me to make the most out of it.

In order to make this a bit more interesting and to get those creative juices flowing more, and not to mention resolve some long past FOMO of all the game jams that have passed me by over the years, I’ll use the below list of game jams themes that have already passed over the years that I’ve collected as prompts to give myself a creative limitation to work with and keep things fresh from game to game. That’s not to say that I will be using one every week, but it will give the chance to get a semblance of what being at those game jams at those time would have been like.

The hope by the end of all this is to give myself the skill set to be able to confidently and comfortable work on developing the bigger games that I want to build and not worry about the skills I lack in the engine or in game design. Originally, I also wanted to use this to work on my art and music skills, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I’ll keep it as simple as I can for now to keep the motivation pushing on.

I hope, if anything, that by reading this you feel inspired to follow this challenge yourself if you’ve never tried game development yourself, the game industry is going through a lot lately and I believe every new voice can lend something to the stories and experiences we all enjoy, and it can all start with committing to making something small and new every week.

List of Game Jam Themes:

(Collected from these game jams: Ludum Dare, Global Game Jam, GMTK Game Jam, Brackeys Game Jam, Ectocomp, Pirate Software Game Jam, Game Off)