Time for a Test Run!

We formed a company. We spent countless hours talking about the games we want. We created a mission, values, company goals. We bought a domain. The another! We have official email addressed. We even finally have a bank account (with money in it!).

Now it’s time to get real. We’re married. We spend a lot of time together. We fight. But, more often, we get along too. We have two kids under three. Can we do this? We have the skills to create great games but can we complete a game? Do I want to?

Then @rocktavious mentioned that he had been wanting to take a Unity game development class. It was the perfect opportunity to get my feet wet in the game development life cycle while also finding out how well @rocktavious and I would work together. We already knew we could build a deck, install wood flooring in a 2000 square foot house and raise two pretty amazing kids together. But could we make a game and come out the other end still talking?

The answer turned out to be yes. A pretty easy yes. I’m not sure why I thought we would butt heads so much. It turned out, we were often on the same page, generally listened to each others ideas, and were able to make a game better than expected in just 6 weeks. It’s a small game; only one level. But it’s fun, or so people tell us, and it has plenty of room to grow. Maybe one day we’ll circle back and make it a full game!

If you’re interested, head over and play our single level coop game: 2 > 1!

The class left a bit to be desired in terms of site layout. The navigation really drove me nuts. But overall it was completely worth the price for us. It gave us a good jumping off point for coming up with templates for a concept doc, asset list and general unity project structure. After a few more iterations of small games, we’ll do a blog post on the process we’ve honed if anyone’s interested.

The class gave me great insight into the entire life cycle even though this was just a small slice of games development. I came out of the class excited to make another game and see where we can take Red Owl. It also gave me a confidence boost that this adventure won’t be led by @rocktavious with me tagging along behind him. We’re going to be walking the path together.

The further we got into the class, the more clear it became that we both have different strengths that we bring to the table that really compliment each other very well. @rocktavious has a better handle on some of the more complex Unity coding we had to do (for now!) since he has so much more experience with Unity than I do but out of the gate I was definitely able to contribute to coding 2 > 1 as well. I was definitely the one that kept the scope creep down as well. Seriously, we can’t add that right now!

The course is complete. Our first dry run as a game studio can be marked as a success. Now on to our first game jam. Let’s try it again, but do it all in 72 hours instead of over the course of 6 weeks!