Game Development and Stacking Pancakes

I just watched this video by Lazy Devs about game development and I wanted to write about it. So I did write about it. You might even read what I wrote. I know I did. Although, you should watch the video before reading because it’ll make more sense. I understand if you can’t; it is 40 minutes long. And if you really want context, play Pancakes, a game I made a while ago.

Two points in the video stood out to me: not knowing how many circles there are to fill and cutting corners.

How many circles are there?

I didn’t realize how many things go into finishing a game until I finished a game. Piles of things, like making buttons change when they’re clicked, scene transitions, game reset, and the main menu background. It made me come to terms with how much I can do as just one person. I learned more about game development by finishing Pancakes than I did by watching hours of tutorials on Youtube. I needed the technical side, but what I couldn’t learn by watching tutorials is what it takes to finish.

Cutting corners

I cut some corners while making Pancakes, but not the corners that would’ve sped up the project. For example: at about four hours in, I had basic stacking pancakes and an almost working camera. I could’ve slapped together a main menu and finished at six hours. And in fact, doing that probably would’ve imparted the aesthetic I was looking for in the first place. Instead, I told myself that it was important to stack thousands of pancakes. So I spent another fifteen hours perfecting the stacking mechanism and another three hours finishing everything. If I had finished things like the main menu earlier, I might have stopped earlier and moved on to another project. But here’s where it gets tricky: the stacking is the heart of the game and I didn’t want to compromise. Sometimes it’s hard for me to see through the mess, and perfecting something reduces the amount of time I spend in shoud-I-finish-this limbo. But what I’m seeing now is this: doing the little things first moves the goal post of finishing out from behind perfection.

Conclusion

Going forward, I’ll try spending a little time in each development category before perfecting anything. Maybe I get each part of the game to 15% and then go all out stacking thousands of pancakes.

Anyway, I hope this was interesting. See you tomorrow!