Or, a terrible idea, documented

I’m going to make a game in 30 days. Thirty individual days. That means that I won’t necessarily be publishing a game on September 11th. I plan to slot in those days between now and the end of the year.

Why?

I’ve tried to participate in a few game jams over the years, but, between work and family life, I can never seem to put aside enough time for a specific game jam. I’ve made some decent efforts in, for example, the Weekly Game Jam, and even made a whole game back in 2016 for a Ludum Dare. . .for which I forgot to include the Unity data package, and then promptly left it to rot for a year before remembering that I’d made it. I even tried to host my own jam in the month leading up to my son’s birth last year, which went about as well as anyone who’s ever had a kid thinks it went.

I also have a few “full-fledged” game concepts that are sitting unfinished and neglected on just about every computer I own. They’ll get worked on eventually. Maybe.

The problem, as far as I can tell, is that I’m always just a little bit too ambitious. I decide that I’m going to do a game in two days and then I decide “I’m going to make a game in my spare time”, and in boths cases the game balloons in scope and ends up getting abandoned either a day in because I have other responsibilities (game jams) or a week in because I have other responsibilities (non-game jams). In either case, the ambition is just too high: I don’t have the amount of spare time that I need to make a game in two days, and I don’t have the amount of spare time to make a game whose scope is indeterminate and constantly changing.

Enter: the 30-day challenge. I know I can’t finish a game in two days. I also know I won’t finish a game if I have an indefinite deadline. Thirty days worked for Game Maker’s Toolkit, maybe it’ll work for me!

How?

The key will be scope management. My manager will tell you in no uncertain terms that I am terrible at this. Despite programming for most of my life, I am really, really bad at figuring out how long something will take to finish. So, let’s define the scope now:

  • The game will be about a little goblin named Ugdoq. He’s out of a setting I’ve been building for a few years for D&D. He’s a nice guy.

Ain't he a looker?

  • Ugdoq needs to find McGuffin in order to accomplish some goal.
  • Ugdoq isn’t very nimble, and as such won’t be doing any platforming.
  • Ugdoq will travel through three levels:
    • Leaving his tribe
    • Escaping the mountain
    • Finding the nearest human settlement
  • You’ll see Ugdoq from a 45-degree “isometric” view. Basically, a top-down shooter, probably without any shooting.

Yeah, that’s all. That’s the extent of the game.

  • No platforming (no fiddly controls for me to endlessly fret over)
  • No 3D world (no fiddly game engine for me to endlessly fret over)
  • A specific narrative that I want to communicate

What?

The game will be written in plain HTML5 and TypeScript. No game engines, not even Phaser. Since Phaser has crappy TypeScript support anyway, I’m not losing out on much. I don’t need an engine for something as simple as this. This isn’t one of my “I’m not using any libraries!” projects, though. If I find a library that does something for me, I’m going to use it. I just don’t intend to use any engines.

The game will be hosted on GitLab. I have a side goal to have a “playable” version of the game every day, but that isn’t a promise.

I intend to make all the game assets myself, with the exception of music. I’ll be drawing all the art, recording all the sounds.

That’s all I’ve got for now. The repo for the game is live, but I’ve only pushed up the infrastructure bits so far. I plan to blog every day that I work on the game, and to end each day’s blog post with the plan for that day, or what was accomplished that day.

Goal for day one is to get a basic movement system up and running, and get some placeholder images in. Wish me luck!

EDIT: Day One post is live