Searching for a Personal Project
Like the previous post mentioned, at the time of writing I only ever came up with two projects that actually completed. Thus, in order to fill the void in my “collection” tab, I need a personal project. Thing is, I have had several ideas that I would love to develop with the caveat that they are too big for one person to work on.
What I need now is a few small games that demonstrate that I can do what I claim: make games. Issue is actually coming up with innovative or unique ideas myself. Game Jams help with that, don’t get me wrong. But at my current level, with my experience and repertoire I have to admit finding a group isn’t exactly easy.
I don’t blame the more experienced fellows of the hobby for not picking me up then/now; if I were in their shoes I might not choose who I currently am either. Any developer worth their salt needs to demonstrate their ability, even if it is in a flawed project that only manages to demonstrate a skill.
My problem is something that a professor told me a year or two back, right around the end of 2020. Around then I took a course in a game-related field (not directly tied with game development, sadly). Sometime before the end of the semester, the professor was giving every student (of which there were few) personalized critiques and assessments on their skills and roles. From what I heard and experienced firsthand with my peers, the assessments were genuine.
I was one of the last ones to get an assessment that day. They gave everyone else a realistic pursuit. “Your art is good quality, try to focus on that,” or “your programming ability needs freshening up, but you have potential as an engineer.“ I even heard the professor call someone “a prospective lead or producer.”
But when they got to me, I got the simplest assessment. “You can do anything, and you would do it well.”
I was flattered, yes, but I was more confused than anything. The professor gave everyone else in the class a direction to walk, then handed me a proverbial map with no paths. Maybe they were buttering me up since I was the only one in the class to express interest in a research project, maybe it was genuine. I never thought about it whenever I tried putting pen to paper and developing something, only when I got stuck. The confusion only grew, never resolving itself, and even after taking an additional class with that professor I was still dumbfounded. They never acknowledged what they said to me, sometimes I thought they even forgot.
What I interpreted from that advise was essentially to go on a game-related spiritual journey of sorts. Instead of developing games in that time, I looked inward for about a month and tried to find if I had an identity to express at all. Around then, I got engrossed in rhythm games like Crypt of the Necrodancer and Rhythm Doctor. In my head, they are polar opposites of the genre that were still closely related.
I couldn’t tell you what exactly I found so interested about them back then, but I can tell you what actions happened afterwards: I bought the simplest edition of FL Studio. If my professor told me I could “be whatever I want,” I would test the limits of that.
The decision was mostly inspired by a certain creator that I follow, you may have heard of him: Toby Fox. Yeah, count me among the million-bajillion people who “look up to him.”
In actuality, I admire what he did and how he did it. UNDERTALE is a pretty good game, but I have to admit that it doesn’t grace my top 10. Not due to any problems, mind you, the game is incredible and any flaws that I found were seamlessly hidden away or accounted for. Like I said, it isn’t UNDERTALE that I admire, its the creator.
Forgive me for making this section the part where I’m coy or sly, but I’m more of a fan of his other works. No, not that first one that people point to as being inspiration for UNDERTALE. Not the one he’s currently working on. I will not admit anything. What I will say is that I wish I was able to peer into Toby Fox’s brain during the time that I am beating around the bush to describe. Toby Fox was the primary proponent of UNDERTALE’s development (asides the Kickstarter funds he acquired), yet he also made an incredible soundtrack alongside a game that captivated millions. That is what I admire. End to end, UNDERTALE is saturated with barrel fulls of Toby Fox’s personality. You can see tiny hints of inspirations and originality, but they are all from the brain space of Toby Fox specifically. If you really, really like UNDERTALE, then you know what my objective with development is.
I want that feeling. I want someone to look into a slice of my brain, experience it, and to gush about it. I want that.
The FL Studio purchase was mostly impulse, I will admit, but it went to some good use. I learned a lot about making music, assisted by previous experience jamming with myself on the piano. I can’t say for certain that I can make a song as good as Toby Fox can, but I can certainly make a song that I, myself, will tap my foot to.
That is another thing that I want out of my development journey. I want to discover what my perfect game is.
Not the age old question of “what makes a game good?” or “how do you measure quality in a game?“ I want to look in my own Steam library, pick out the games I like the most, gawk at how different they are and find out “why do I think these are good?”
Self-discovery is a topic occasionally broached alongside psychedelic epiphanies and treks across countries (even blog posts by yours truly), but I don’t want to discover who I am. I want to pick apart the flecks of incessant greed for entertainment inside of me, crush them in my palms and see what shape it will make. Why do I like Psychedelic Trance music, but not modern Pop music? Why am I able to sit down and binge watch an entire series of Anime in one sitting, but I can’t be bothered to sit in one place watching a play?
These questions will run through my mind as I open Unity for the first time in weeks.
If this blog seems more like a stream of consciousness, you’d be right. I’ll probably not do these kinds of blog posts often if I can help it. This was more a means to an end now that I have an actual website up and running. I need drive and motivation, and the possibility that someone could expect something from me and look forward to seeing it may be what kicks it all off.
Who knows? We’ll see and hear about that soon, I’m sure.
