I made this mistake before, so with this I hope that people starting out with game development won’t make the same. And I’m talking about skipping the discovery phase of the development process. Don’t make this mistake. Don’t fall into thinking that an idea is easy to put in the garbage after finding out with a prototype that it’s not going to work.

See, I thought before that I was being smart with my first game by starting off with prototyping the idea to see if it actually works first but the key thing I missed is that the prototype itself will take a lot of time. For a lack of a better term, there was a lot of dancing around because I knew the idea and I had the vision, but of course it just wasn’t clear. I mistakenly didn’t plan it out. And again, it was my first game. So without even defining and analyzing the scope of the whole game, I ended up taking on things that were too much for my skills at the time, making things worse. I’m stubborn so I painfully finished but I did ended up taking a step back. You though, don’t have to make the same mistake and be able to release more games.

So it’s official. I’m committing to my next game idea and it will be about financial literacy. And yes, I’m only committing because I have done the proper documenting and planning. This time, I have a game design document about all the rules and descriptions for my game, such as the mechanics and the user experience. The overall visual and flow (feature image of this log) for the game is planned.

Of course, I will stick with my low poly art because they are manageable as a solo developer and there’s beauty in its simplicity. Also, keeping my skills in mind throughout this phase, I feel a lot more confident with the programming I will be putting myself through. I have my milestones set up and strategy to hopefully build a community around this game. All of which every game developer should discover and plan before moving into producing the game.

I’ve provided a document blueprint to help with the discovery phase and here is the link as I quickly just made it seem as if this whole phase will be easy peasy, but it will take time. And its crucial time needed in the whole process to prevent wasting resources when all that was needed was a scope and a plan for the game. Good luck with your journey and wish me luck with mine!