I recently finished and published ColoRise. While I have dabbled in game development as a hobby for a long time now, and while this is certainly not my first game, it is what I would call the first "completed" project. I have done jam games before (as is evident on my profile here), and have more or less completed very small games, and started many bigger projects. But I never had something that I considered complete and (somewhat) polished, that went beyond a basic prototype.

So now that it is done, I want to look back. Tell you about the project's history, and evaluate its strengths as well as its shortcomings.

Where it all started

Last summer I got the urge to create games again after a bit of a hiatus. I had previously gotten demotivated during projects, because they were too big, too complex, and badly planned, and so I often would abandon them once I hit the first hurdle. I decided that this time would be different, and I took the advice that is repeated online over and over again: start with something small.

So I looked for small game ideas. I got some inspiration when I moved together with my partner last summer. I never had any plants at my place, but theirs was packed full with plants. So suddenly I too was living in a place with plants everywhere. And while I wouldn't be able to keep up with caring for all these plants, having them around really made the place look nicer and more enjoyable (most of the compliments the NPCs give you in the game actually reflect how I feel about my partner and their plants). Somehow I felt like I could capture that feeling in a game, and I expanded on that idea.

I created a small prototype first, like I had already done often. I threw something together with Kenney's Roguelike Modern City asset pack. Back then you would move the character with the keyboard, and I had planned this whole strategic element of actually collecting the planting pots, moving them from where you found them to a better spot  and so on. After a bit of research I found a youtube tutorial by Quantum Code, outlining sprite masking, which I would modify to create the color effect (as this system uses Godot's "Light2D System", I always think of the colored parts as "lights", and even though it works completely different by now, it's still called light everywhere in my code).

I managed to get quite a few things working in this prototype, but I wasn't happy with the movement. I wanted to make it feel simpler, and decided on point and click. I went on to try NavMeshes, Steering Behaviors, etc., so you wouldn't feel tied to a grid. Non of it seemed to really work, and I almost gave up in the mean time.

After getting a bit of distance to the project, I decided to make it simpler and smaller again. I made the movement system grid-based, and could use an A*-Algorithm for it. It worked out well. I still had the movable pots in for a while, but ultimately replaced them with fixed planting spots. That also made it easier to implement the win condition later on. I was surprised again and again how much I didn't actually need in the game. I think that ultimately made it possible for me to finish this project.

What went wrong

Of course, not everything went right in this project. Here is a not comprehensive list of things I think could have gone better.

Audio

Audio is certainly the first thing to come to mind. While I am actually quite proud of my rough implementation of adaptive music, the music, and the sound effects even more, seem inconsistent. I grabbed them from the internet wherever I found them, and then tried my hand at editing them in Audacity. It was an interesting introduction to that workflow for me, but you can hear my lack of experience. The same is true for the music. I think I found tracks that are each somewhat fitting on their own, but together they are just a weird mixture.

I am thinking about doing a few projects where I can practice creating my own music. I have little experience with that, so I don't know if I will get there, but it would just be nice to be able to get something that fits together and is tailered to my game.

Motivation

I am actually uncertain if this should be here, or in the "went right" section. After all, I did complete the project. However, I feel like I could have gotten here earlier. Especially towards the end, I felt like I was almost done, and there was still so much work to do. But I believe that albeit my motivation was lacking at some points, the experience of being able to finish despite that will be helpful for future projects.

Marketing

After the point where I thought I was finished with the game I had to start creating my itch page. I was surprised by the amount of extra work I had barely considered, but on the other hand am proud of what I accomplished. However, while I did share some of my progress with the game on Twitter, making my game known was an afterthought. I know I could make it more interesting with short trailer, maybe an animated title card. But to be honest, I didn't want to do anything more.

I think the lesson to take from that is to plan ahead. To know what I want to do for presentation, and to include that into my project schedule. Just knowing what I could or should do is helpful, because now I won't consider it "extra work". Apart from that it would probably help to have some community, for which I might need to get over my anxiety with posting on discord servers and the likes.

What went right

While a few things went wrong, I am still here, writing about a completed project. So, compared to some shelved prototype, some things have obviously went right.

Project Planning

I realized early in the project, that most of my lack of motivation came from not knowing what step to take next, or what the steps even where. So I tried working with a Trello board, and I was really impressed by how much that helped me. Not only did it help me organize the steps, and keep me motivated by knowing what to do, but seeing how much I already had accomplished was also a huge motivation boost. To be honest, I don't know if I could have completed this project without this Trello board (or another form of project planning). Having discovered this method, and how well I work with it, I am faithful that I can repeat this success, and build on it.

One more thing about project planning that worked well was keeping a realistic scope. I had many ideas that sounded cool, and I even had features that were already implemented, but I decided to scrap them. I managed to consciously avoid scope creep, and this allowed me to finish this game. Otherwhise I would still be working on it (probably with only little benefit from the added features), or have abandoned the project alltogether. But I stayed on course with my goal to make a small game, and I am happy with the result.

Time Management

This is the "went right" counterpart of the Motivation section above. While I probably could have done this project in less time, and I have to admit its a relatively small project for about 7 months of work, I am just glad I managed to fit it in my schedule. I am doing a PhD, which means I work a full time job, and I have to balance my partner, friends and other hobbies with my game development hobby. Apart from that I took a break for two game jams, one a week long, the other a month long. All this means that often I could not work on the game for a week, and if I could only an hour at a time for a few days.

That is surely not optimal, but still I managed to find enough time besides a relatively full life to make this game. For future projects I want to apply what I learned about time management, and maybe even expand on it. Find better schedules, build up stronger habits, and maybe develop discipine and efficiency, so I can move to doing bigger projects in less time.

Completeness

What I am most proud of is how complete this project feels. I invested time in every step of the way, and I'm sure I rushed some of them, but there was effort involved. I got to do many phases of a project I had never gotten to. The game may not be perfectly polished, but I got to polish it. I have uploaded games on itch, but never bothered to work on the game page beyond a fitting color scheme and maybe a custom font. But seeing the page of ColoRise, where I did something with it makes me so happy. And it makes me motivated to devote that much attention to the presentation for other games as well.

I have always felt reluctant to really call game development a hobby of mine, because what I had never really created something I would consider an actual game. My jam game Saturday Morning Roundtrip, which I did for VimJam 2020 gave me a huge boost in confidence, as rough and buggy as it was. But seeing where I got with ColoRise finally makes me feel like I earned (my own) permission to call myself a hobbyist game developer.

I hope you enjoed my rambling, and that you also enjoyed my game. If it gave you a few minutes of happiness, then I feel I even surpassed that goal I set out to do all those months ago.