I have been wanting to make games for years, in various stages in life and with different levels of commitment. My main issue though has always been that I know nothing about it. I have never really known coding, programs or engines and graphically speaking I am good at art that only indirectly works with games in some capacity. Also, I have a terrible flaw of giving up when things get too hard. So for a long time making games was at best some form of day dream where I was thinking up ideas for games that I would never make. But as I have gotten older, I've realized that life isn't an eternity and my job isn't anything other than a source of income. So why waste my spare time just shutting off my brain?

Started downloading a bunch of different game making tools, everything from Unity to Twine. And I began just messing with them, not really learning them as much as just poking at them to see what would happen. And I realized a few things during that period. First off, programs like Unity is well above my level of competence at this stage and I will need to fight against my easily distracted self to be able to learn to weild that brush in any meaningful capacity. So I've put a lot of my game ideas that are mechanics based in a folder for future use. As I hope to one day open that box up and do something.

A strentgh I do have though is a very vivid imagination. Granted, the last few years I have let life put a layer of dust on it for various reasons. But as life has stabiIized I came to realize that I feel the most alive when I am truly creative. And the things I can easily do already is writing and photography. Which at first got me thinking I could make a Twine game. The more I think about it though, the more I want my game to not just be walls of text. Because I can barely handle that myself. As I said, I am easily distracted. And most Twine games that I've tried to play have a tendency to lose me half way through because I get tired of reading. Even if the story is decent, it's just not holding my attention (it's also a reason I barely read books, except a few authors with writing styles that really compells me to continue).

Which lead me to Ren'Py, which is a program used mostly for visual novels. At first I had put that off because the last thing I feel like creating is a dating sim (even if Katawa Shoujo is amazing). But the tools in that program and what you're able to create with it falls on my strengths creatively, which is text and still images. On top of that, it's also super easy to incorporate music and sound effects as well as video. And even though I am not at all trained to produce music, I have been able to create a few ambient tracks using GarageBand's different instruments and plugins.

Writing this blog is a bit like a declaration of intent. A means to get myself to sign off on something publicly so I have something I can hold myself to. Maybe it all falls apart, maybe a year from now this was all a crazy crisis of a 30 year old dude working a dead end job.

Currently I am working on the script and overall concepts of the game. My aim is for it to be a completely non-anime futuristic visual novel and I hope to be able to incorporate some philosophical ideas I have into a narrative arc that hopefully has branches with different endings. Yeah, I know, it's a bit ambitious for one dude's first. But that's sort of how I've always been. All or nothing. I would rather crash and burn than not trying.

All said and done though, I am sort of treating this as a serious project while at the same time accepting it being a bit of a big learning experience. Life isn't waiting to hand me my chances, so I better do something before it's completely too late. And who knows, maybe this is all impossible and I'll drive my wife crazy in the process, but let's hope not! Let us hope I get through this with a richer set of experiences and hopefully more equipped at taking it to the next level next time around.

If anyone here have tried to make a game or are experienced at making games and feel like giving me some general advice, feel free to do so and thank you in advance if you do.