I made a thing!

What a journey it's been. I was told at the beginning of my career change that trying to break into the games industry without experience, coding knowledge or having Leonardo DaVinci level of artistry was going to be hard, not impossible but hard.

Well that was true. I've had a number of rejections, with most saying the same thing, "get some experience, then we can talk". The good 'ol Catch 22 (read about this HERE if you're not sure what that means), you need experience to get experience... but, there might be another way.

I'll just do it by myself... in previous posts I mentioned that I had started learning more C# language and I've been working on Unity and Blender. Now I'm happy to say I made a thing! Not a great thing, but it's a thing!

I think most modern game developers have had a go at making an Angry Birds clone at some point in their career. The game itself took the world by storm and has become a stable download on most mobile phones. Because I love Vikings, and therefore Axes, including being partial to a bit of Axe Throwing, I decided to make my own thing with Axes instead of birds.

Meet Woodchuck Chuck!

SMACK! I love a good RigidBody collision

Yep, pull thing, let go of thing, thing hits thing, destroying thing! It's simple, it's basically a carbo copy of a million of other games out there, it has no menu, but it's mine!

I've got sooo much to put into practice with game development and doing these mini tests and demos have really helped me to understand more about what goes into the game development process. In fact, I've got so many mini projects going on I sometimes get a bit lost, especially as I'm speaking to so many people in so many different countries across so many different time zones... sleep has now become a thing of the past. And I'm happy to be awake!

The only thing I can do is keep reaching out to recruiters and companies and practicing. I'm not realistically expecting myself to become a world-class game developer but by having hands on knowledge of making a game I'll be in a better position to talk the talk when speaking to talent developers out there. Hopefully someone will be able to give me the break I need and give me in-house experience soon.

If you're attempting to do your own career change into the games industry then the most important thing is to download all the tools, I suggest:

Unity - To actually make the games, it's pretty...simple?

Blender - To make your own characters and assets

GIMP - To make sprites for 2d projects or meshes for your 3d assets

After you have these, get on YouTube and start absorbing information, the tutorials available are fantastic. Not all of them are complete and don't expect to have a releasable game after following one video (or even your first 5-10), but eventually it will start to sink in.

I think I'm pretty luckily as I've managed to make a friend who is a brilliant Unity whiz-kid and we might be able to start bringing to life some of my earlier game ideas, but even if that doesn't work out, it's been a great experience and good (frustrating sometimes) fun!