What I've learned so far

Hello, I'm PugDev and I'm attempting to build my first game and release it to itch and steam. I'll talk about what my project is, my goal for the game, how long I've been working on it, and my journey so far.

What is the project?:

The project is called Megabat and it is a simple platformer (sort of, I'll get to that) with some puzzle elements. You play as a bat that has to work it's way through a variety of rooms. It is sort of a platformer because instead of jumping you can fly or at least as long as your stamina allows. You collect different types of fruit to unlock the door to the next challenge room. Those same fruits also give you different abilities which help you complete said challenge rooms. 

My goal:

The main goal is to finish a well polished game. For what that means I'm not 100% sure yet... I have to remember to be realistic about what I can do or rather what I should do since it is my first game. I don't want to overwhelm myself with too many features, which has definitely been a challenge so far. I have to constantly remind myself to keep things simple. The smaller goals are to learn more about game development and become more efficient at it.

Time spent:

The core of the game was built in a total of 48 hours (not two days but a total of 48 hours of work). After that, I think I've been working on this project for almost 2 years now with lots of breaks. 

My Journey so far:

For a long time I wasn't making too much progress, I was really struggling to stay motivated and didn't really know the direction of my game. One thing that really helped me was starting a twitch stream. One, it helped me stay on a consistent schedule. Two, regardless of the size of the stream (in my case very small) it was an easy way to share my project with others and get feedback. I've found that people are pretty curious about game devs and just how games are built. I've also got help from twitch chat on things like sound design (which I'm really bad at) and certain scenes in godot. So far having a twitch stream has been very beneficial to my learning. If anyone is interested in this topic of game dev on twitch I'm happy to talk more about it even though my experience is fairly minimal.

Overall:

I've gone from having fun making this game to hating it to loving it again. I think it's important to take breaks and have fun. There is more devlogs to come that will be more related to the updates of the game, I just wanted the first one I make to be more about the project as a whole. I wish everyone luck with their projects and if you've somehow made it through this whole devlog I would appreciate it if you gave my game a try (it's free right now) and provided feedback I promise you won't hurt my feelings.

Game Updates:

• More enemies (laser turrets, laser wheel, yes it's exactly what it sounds like)
• More tutorial type levels to ease players into the gameplay for a total of 35 levels (15 tutorial, 15 lab, 5 forest)
• Climb up around corners (yes you couldn't do this before way harder then I thought this would be)