This was my first game in many, many years, over a decade, that has seen the light of day. My very first game, Recluse: The Darkness is Coming, was embarrassing in retrospect and has luckily been lost to the annals of the internet as I haven't been able to find any trace of it ever existing in recent years. Good thing, I imagine. 

Imagmanation isn't a hit, even a success. It has two downloads at time of writing and one of them is me. The game is bad, short, the ending rushed. That said, I do enjoy it as a player and find it to be a great attempt at breaking back into the game dev scene. Built over ten days, I was determined to get it out before August. And I did!

The engine used was Game Creator 001, formerly Engine 001. I had used this for ALL of my projects and have been a user of the software for over a decade.  When the GDevelop Game Jam was anounced, I was eager to participate because I wanted to try a more modern engine. I learned as I went and developed Cattery Collect for the jam, which you can play from my profile. The Jam edition is short, but it laid the groundwork for a massive project that I want to polish and elaborate upon.

All of that to say that this game not only rekindled my passion for making games (even though it's not very good), but it also showed me that I can make pixel art and learn new programming languages fairly easily (VBA, in the case of this game. I utilized text scripting instead of graphical for much of this game). The pixel art as largely bolstered my confidence as a game dev as I see so many games that use multitudes of premade assets, but here I am, building one from scratch. As a solo dev, this really empowered me. 

If you are an indie solo dev that is struggling to release a game because you don't think it's good enough, do it. Release it. Your first game is gonna suck. That's been proven again and again. Get the idea that you are crushing on out of your system. Even if no one plays it, you still did it, you still released a game. You are now an indie dev. I'm proud of you.

Because of Imagmanation, I was driven toward Cattery Collect and I cannot appreciate this shift in direction and game engine more. I currently use GDevelop and I absolutely love it. It's smooth, optimized, and super easy to use and organize. As a purveyor of 2D games, I love it. 

Release your crappy game, your too-big idea. Maybe people will play it, maybe they won't. You can always update it. Keep up the work and your work will pay off. Remember, Rovo made like 50 games before Angry Birds became a success. You're doing fine.

-Crappie Coding

Follow me on Twitter @omegagames1