I going to make One Game a Month in 2013
Saturday, December 22nd, 2012
I’ve decided to join in with One Game a Month, organised by McFunkypants, in 2013. A while ago I was thinking how cool it would be to make one game a week but that is probably a bit too hardcore for my current life setup with a family and the need to earn money to survive, so a game a month sounds much more doable for me.
Why do I want to do this?
The most fun I had coding was probably when I was a kid/teenager. I did a “gamejam” most weekends with a friend and also made games all week long as my hobby (after school). I want to relive that experience and explore some of my favourite genres with modern technology and with better programming skills. I’ve been meaning to do it for years but not been able to justify it due to working on money-earning projects to feed my family. However, my situation has changed slightly recently and it will afford me a bit of freedom for the first time in a long time.
How long will I spend on each game?
I won’t be spending a whole month on each game. I’ll just make sure I produce a game a month. Some of them may just be 1-2 day games, which is fine, and others may take longer. Some of them may be publishable on iPhone/iPad and others may work well as Flash games. After I have 12 games done I may find that one of them really excites me and might continue working on it and turn it into a bigger project. Basically I’m thinking of it as a year of producing 12 prototypes.
At the start of the year I have to finish porting Titan Attacks to mobile, and later in the year I’ll still continue to work some casual games and Dying To Live so that I don’t run out of money. So these 12 games will be side projects alongside my main work. I’m pretty confident I can do it now that I’ve committed to doing it 
What language will I use?
I’ll most likely use Monkey for all the games. It’s a powerful cross-platform OOP BASIC-style language that is best-suited to 2D.
I’ll probably also learn a lot more about game design along the way, which will be fun!
Will I use a framework?
I already have a basic game framework in Monkey that is improving as I work on Titan Attacks. I’ll use it and improve it as I write the 12 games and so by the end of the year it should be pretty good and ready to roll for more commercial games.
I don’t necessarily advise other people write a framework as it’s easy to get bogged down in such things, so don’t do it if you don’t want to. However, if you write each game using as much common code as possible, by the end you could have a pretty decent reusable framework…
Are you entering the challenge too?
Let me know in the comments. And good luck to you too!
