What I learned as a beginner Game Dev that might help someone else

The completion of DaggerToss and what I've learned

To date: 250 Browser Plays, 4 Downloads, 593 views.

Making a game with zero experience

"DaggerToss" marks the first long-term video game project I have ever completed. I came up with the initial idea during a college course assignment  in Unity which required me to make a game with at least : one single working level, a win screen, a lose screen and a title screen. 

The assignment also called for a Game Design Document and another document to summarise my work when the project was finished. 

I originally envisioned a fixed screen POV game where the player would click on moving targets to throw daggers, and would earn points based on their accuracy.  Very simple and easily achievable within the 10 weeks, despite the fact that I had no experience whatsoever with Unity or coding. 

I learned to create a Game Design Document, which is very helpful to have while working on a project because you can keep track of all of the planned features and mechanics, adding and subtracting things as the work piles up and deadlines rapidly approach. 
While I was in the planning stage the original Idea that I had in mind began to change and by the time I was ready to begin actually making the game,  the scope had expanded and I switched to making a 2D Side Scroller / point and click adventure instead. 

Grappling with Unity2D as a beginner

A quick summary of what I learned immediately:

• Save your progress!! Unity can CRASH, laptops can be put to sleep without clicking save, HOURS of progress can be lost in a single second, especially when your brain is tired and you've spent a long day tackling new concepts.  GITHUB is a good tool for version control  also. 
  
• Take breaks! the second most important thing I learned , if you do not take breaks you will get burnt out. Then you will start to make simple mistakes in your code or in your project which means you'll stop making sweet sweet progress. 

• You don't need a fancy tablet or software to make assets.  With the exception of the background tilesets and the sprites for the actual dagger objects that you throw in "DaggerToss:, I drew every art asset on my phone using the "AutoDesk Sketch" app. I drew everything with my fingertip on a phone screen, exported my doodles to my google drive as .png files and then downloaded them onto my laptop and into the project. 

C# and the heartbreak of console errors

Learning a new skill is never easy, and C# was no exception. I had never coded anything before and during the first few weeks of starting this project, I laughed, cried and stress ate my way through the necessary programming of even the most "simple" staples of video games.

The timer, player health, dagger counter and health bar mechanics  all presented themselves as insurmountable problems,  I would spend an hour scanning my painstakingly written scripts for the glaring error that was stopping my project from running only to find that I'd forgotten a  ";" or a "}"  or misspelled a variable etc. (At this stage of development, I couldn't understand ANYTHING in the console errors that Unity was throwing me, and googling for help often left me more confused than I had started out). I would feel dejected if I reached the end of the day, sometimes after 10 hours of work, and my project was left in an unplayable state for the evening because of teething problems in my programming. 

But nothing compares to the rush of sweet VICTORY I would feel when I would find the solution, update my script and press PLAY and see the glorious result: a timer counting down to 00.00. Incredible stuff. 

Today, I understand what Unity is trying to tell me when I try to feed it my spaghetti code, console errors are my friend now, albeit the friend that drops in on you without an invitation and sticks around until you find the magic combination of words that makes them leave again. 
I know my variables from my classes and I can read the Unity API, which is a godsend. 

The most important take away is to KEEP GOING. Keep trying, keep learning. One day it just clicks and programming isn't as painful any more. 

Outcomes

I started making "DaggerToss" on the 11th of June, 2021 and I completed the final update to this game  on Friday, 18th of February 2022.

252 days or roughly 8.285 months according to google.  After the first ten weeks, 70 days into the project, I had done enough work to secure my diploma in Game Design, and I earned a distinction in my final grade.  I could have stopped there, but I loved working on the project so much I had to keep going. I developed a story, created cutscenes and learned to animate them. I created 7 more levels, including 3 boss fights and a level where our lovable hero is captured and the gameplay is changed entirely. (Nightmare to programme, that.)

I started posting my game on Reddit and gathering feedback, it felt amazing to have someone take the time to play my game, even if the feedback that followed was constructive criticism instead of praise and adoration.  I added features that people wanted to see, such as the pause menu, a crude volume slider that I eventually made obsolete  by  manually adjusting each level's volume.(The slider still exists in the game).

I happened to get talking to a man from New York named Steve who had been to college for music production and he kindly created a completely original soundtrack for "DaggerToss" that I still love listening to!

The pinnacle of this project's success  was watching successful Twitch Streamer and game jam extraordinaire  "Vimlark" play "DaggerToss"  live on stream.  He enjoyed it. Watching him play it was incredible and it was really great to see Vimlark genuinely laughing and smiling throughout, even when the bugs (some expected, some not!) popped up. 

The most important thing that I learned from the experience of making "DaggerToss"  is that your games don't have to be viral successes for there to be value in creating them.  You can learn so much from bringing your ideas to life and there's a lot of joy in looking at the finished product, regardless of the scale and being able to say "I made that".

Thanks so much for reading