For the past couple of years, establishing goals has slowly become a daily routine for my game development journey. Without goals, we can easily lose motivation as there is no ending in sight. Without goals, our vision can get clouded by all the possible things we can do with our time. Without goals, there can be no achievement. In early 2017, I explored a lot on how to better myself in game development and looked at the opportunities in the gaming market (if you haven't read Game Dev Adventure #1, read that first!). I realized there is still a lot out there I can explore in the industry, and my goal is to become part of it in the long term. Then, in August 2017, I decided to start Herbster Games and created this indie game studio from scratch. At first, I was super excited and wanted to explore ways to get the company off the ground. With limited knowledge on how to start a company, many challenges were in the way, like making sure everything I do is within the boundary of laws and regulations or building up a network for finding the right resources. With the amount of preparation and hard work, it was not easy to do but I was finally able to run on my own and start. However, with all the experience I gained from working on my first games in 2017, I realized I still had much to learn and needed to deepen my skills to write better games and manage the company. I set up a few achievable goals to get towards the dream I long for, and the most important one was to finish at least one game.
Before you keep reading... if you like what you read, remember to subscribe to not miss any new update! While I was working on my games and helping Polycarbon Games once in a while, Joe, a friend of mine, reached out to me and a few others suggesting to make a game together as a group. I thought to myself, "Maybe it is a great idea to join another group to see how different people generally go about game development". Therefore, I agreed to join and started working together. We experimented with a few basic concepts and finally settled with the idea of writing a simple, casual game on the mobile platform to test the waters. During development, two of the group mates left because of personal reasons, and we ended up with three people: Joe (game designer), Michelle (graphic designer/artist), and me (developer). That did not stop us from proceeding with the project. All of us were eager to achieve our goal: to have a working product to show the world that we are capable of making something great. As a small team, we figured out that keeping a small scope for our project would be a key to our success (at least for finishing up a game). We picked a theme and a game mechanic to work with: a goat jumping from one sugary mountain to another. After a few months, we finished the game, Hoppy Goat, and shared it with friends of ours. It was a fun experience!
Unfortunately, after that, we went our separate ways: changing jobs, moving, or other reasons. Even if we no longer work together, we sometimes still check in with each other and let each other knows how we're doing. Working with these people, I have gained valuable knowledge for my future projects. I know that as long as we set up goals for ourselves, we will all be doing great! Set up goals! Follow your dream! That's all I ask of you, for a better world. If you like what you read, please share this post, subscribe to our mailing list, follow our social media pages, and join our discord channel! Thank you, and until next time!
Have Fun. Be Happy. Be Inspirational!
Post featured photo by Richard Felix on Unsplash