November 2019 - Naval Raid

Story Behind

I have been trying to develop my own games for a long time now. Issue was not technical expertise but simply deciding on an idea and implementing it consistently until I finish it. Yet I failed to do this for so long for so many reasons.

I was too lazy, I played way too many games, watched too many series and movies. But when it came to development, when I understood that I had to work on it and get tired, I just switched to another game or watched another episode of another series.

Also I couldn't decide on what to do because I felt like whatever I do I had to create the next indie sensation. It had to be a great game that will sell hundreds of thousands of copies and make me rich. As a result I never found that magical idea. I occasionally got excited about an idea just to ponder upon it too long to lose all my excitement.

My primary focus was mostly making money, I tried to come up with financially sound games. While nothing is wrong with that, motivation of financial gain has never served me good, never helped me create something extraordinary but the things that I made out of love gave me the best results.

Therefore I changed all my thinking and expectations. From now on I will focus on creating fun and interesting games for itch.io. They will be free for anyone to play. I will merge different genres and weird mechanics to create something unique every month and have fun doing it.

My goal is one game every month. To make sure I will stick to the plan I made a deal with my brother. If I couldn't publish a game in a month I would pay around $100 to him. This really pushed me further.

November 2019 was the first month and I created something that is not interesting and not jaw dropping. But I learned a lot and I started to make a habit of getting up early and coding every morning before work. This is very valuable for me because I know I can achieve much more with healthy habits that I develop and practice over time.

Naval Raid

There is nothing much to talk about the game. I was inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn from Lucas Pope and got interested in ships, naval battles and so on. I wanted to make a game about ships, initially my idea was to make a bigger better game but this is what my time let me do. Especially I am disappointed that I couldn't even start to develop an AI for this. I used a very simple trick instead. 

But never the less I managed the scope it down as the time went by and finished it. Finishing something is all that matters for me now.