With the year winding down, it’s time to take a look back and see how I did with my goal to complete one game a month. For those that aren’t familiar with the challenge, you can visit www.onegameamonth.com and check it out, but it it’s exactly what it sounds like where you make a game every month. Theme optional.
So, I managed to get six games out of this. Three of them came from game jams, one from a 2-hour mini-jam and two done during the month. Interestingly enough, the ones that I like the best all came from the jams. The two that were done during the month were….meh. Both were finished at the last possible moment and were not focused at all. Then June hit, and I didn’t stay focused enough to enough get a rough game out, and it just went downhill from there.
So…lessons learned? First, never underestimate the power of scheduling. In the case of the jams and mini-jam, I had very hard, strict unmovable deadlines that forced me to work swiftly. There was no time to wool-gather, no time to mess around. If it wasn’t done it X time, it would never be done, and that was a powerful motivator.
Second is related to scheduling, but not quite the same. In the case of the jams, I had a very specific time block that was designated ‘game dev time’. I knew well in advance that these time blocks were to be used for game development. Not play, not reading, not web-surfacing, game development. For the two non-jam games, there was no such block designated. I just had this vague, general idea of ‘Ya I need to make a game this month. Sometime. Eventually.’ It didn’t work all that well.
How to move forward then? Well, I’ve got my time block for this month. Monday is grades, Tuesday I want to work on my UI skills and develop a Starbound editor (awesome game BTW) and on Wednesday I’ll do the December game. Have the idea already firmly fixed in my mind, so it should be a question of prototype/design/polish to get it hammered out. For next year I’ll be doing one game with updates each month. Of course I still need to work out my schedule, but I’ll have time during winter break to figure that out.
In all, even though I failed at getting out 12 games this year, I’m still really glad that I participated. I learned some more about myself, learned more about the production process, and have some finished games under my belt. Even if some of them are a bit…lack luster. So here’s to 2014! May it be filled with game creation.
Richard Fleming, AKA Languard Gemstrike.
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