Level 1 The Beginning: Relearning the Joy of Making Games

A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Restarting Your Game Development Journey.

Hi everyone 👋

In this newsletter, I want to share a bit about my past, my thoughts for the future, and my process of rediscovering my love for game development. And yes, I know the title “Level 1: The Beginning: Relearning the Joy of Making Games” sounds like a quest. That’s because it is! It’s meant for anyone who wants to start or restart their game development journey, no matter what stage of life you’re in.

Over the last couple of months (or maybe even a year 😅), I haven’t worked on a single game dev project, not even a small personal one. Because of that, I started feeling like I was forgetting my abilities. So, I decided to start over from the basics and climb up level by level again. I’m documenting this journey as I go, and this is Level 1: The Beginning. In this issue, I’ll talk about my first decisions and share a few checkpoints that might help you make your own.

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Checkpoint 1: The Gateway of Decision

Game development is a long, sometimes tough journey. Sure, these days tools and AI make things faster and easier, but even with all that help, there are still many battles to face. That’s why the first and most important step is simply deciding: “Yes, I’m going to do this.”

It’s not just about motivation; it’s about commitment. From the outside, game dev might look shiny and exciting, but once you jump in, you realize there’s a whole iceberg beneath the surface. As game developers, we make countless decisions and some will confuse us, slow us down, or even kill our motivation, you might get stuck in “tutorial hell”, lose focus while error solving, struggle to balance multiple hats (if you don’t know what I mean by “hats”, check out my newsletter Switching Hats: Embracing Yourself by managing them! ) and life’s ups and downs.

That’s exactly why making a clear decision at the start is super important. When you take the time to decide and really commit, your brain locks onto that commitment, it gives you the strength to keep going even when things get hard.

So, take a piece of paper, write down your decision to start your game dev journey, sign it, and keep it somewhere you can see it every day, like on your desk. Even if you give only 5 minutes a day that’s enough for your brain to make your skills alive inside you.

Checkpoint 2: Select Your Battle Tools

Sword, shield, gun, lasers etc. In any action game, you need tools to fight or even your punches 👊 (your character hands are also a tool for them). Game development is no different. Before you fight your battles, you need your own set of tools.

Whether you’re making a digital or board game, you need your own “weapons”. For board games, that might mean pens, colors, and paper. For digital games, it’s engines, frameworks, or hard code. If you’re new to the digital world, don’t worry! All the games we play on consoles, mobile, or PC are made through programming, just like any normal software is created. But we now have tons of tools to make the process faster and easier, at the start of the digital era, games were hard-coded into cartridges with very limited tools. But as times moves on we develop tools to make our process fast, tools like Frameworks are collections of programming libraries that speed up development by giving you pre-built functions. For example, instead of writing your own graphics renderer, a framework gives you one ready to use. Examples include libGDX, Love2D, Pygame, and MonoGame. These give you more control but are harder to learn, so I don’t recommend starting there unless you already have a solid programming background. (Fun fact: games like Stardew Valley and Celeste were built using frameworks like MonoGame!).

The simpler path is using a Game Engine. Game engines are complete software tools that help you build games visually, for 2-D or for 3-D, they provide tools that involve visual editors like level editor, drag-and-drop editors, visual scripting(way to implement logic in game without programming), and tons of built-in features. Popular engines include Unity, Unreal, Godot, and GameMaker. For beginners, I highly recommend starting with a game engine. It’s faster, easier, and helps you understand how everything fits together.

For choosing the right tools, I recommend visiting the official websites of different frameworks and game engines. You’ll be able to see what features each one offers and what they don’t. This also helps you discover various game-development features like particle effects, terrain generation, and more. Even if you don’t end up using particular framework or engine, exploring their websites is still useful and gives you a broader understanding of what’s possible in game development.

For my own journey, I’ve already tried many engines and frameworks, and I eventually chose the Godot Engine, the one I mentioned earlier. There are several reasons behind this choice. First, Godot is extremely lightweight and runs smoothly even on low-end PCs, and it doesn’t require any installation. It’s open-source, has a large and active developer community, and comes with a very beginner-friendly learning curve, my favorite part though, is its node-based development architecture: in Godot, everything is a node. (Honestly, this deserves an entire separate newsletter!) There are many other reasons I prefer Godot, but these are the main ones, If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend trying Godot too. It’s small, simple, and lets you focus on learning rather than fighting your tools.

I’m not discussing art, music, animation, UI, and many other aspects in this newsletter because, as a game developer, you’re essentially the producer of the entire game. Your first focus should be understanding the core of game development. Everything else like visuals, audio, and UI can be outsourced or covered using downloadable assets.

This newsletter is specifically about the core fundamentals of game development. We’ll talk about those other areas in future newsletters.

Checkpoint 3: Developing Skills to Fight

After selecting your tools, it’s time to actually use them: practice, experiment, and learn how they feel in your hands. This is where you discover your strengths and weaknesses. As I mentioned earlier, game development includes many different roles, and once you start working, you’ll naturally realize which tasks fit you well and which ones don’t. But that’s completely normal. Everyone has different abilities, and the key is to identify your unique strengths and build on them.

While developing your game-development skills, you’ll eventually face a boss battle and trust me, it’s one of the toughest you’ll ever encounter. This boss traps you in an infinite loop with yourself, and only when you break that loop can you move forward to the next checkpoint. This monster or this boss is what most people call “Tutorial Hell.” A friend of mine has an even better name for it: “The Preparation Loop”.

I was stuck in that stage for a very long time. My progress changed only when my friend, honestly more like a guide in my life, taught me about something called the Dunning–Kruger effect (look it up on google for the full explanation). In simple words, it’s a psychological bias where people with very little knowledge think they’re more capable than they actually are, while people who are skilled tend to underestimate themselves. Think of it like an iceberg: when you’re outside the water, you feel confident that you can break it with a punch, because you only see the small part above the surface. But once you dive in and see how huge it really is, you start feeling overwhelmed.

Many people quit at this stage because they realize it’s far harder than they expected. But here’s the truth: if you keep fighting slowly, consistently, you will improve. And when you finally become highly skilled, you might still feel like you don’t know enough. That’s also part of the Dunning-Kruger curve. If you check the graph online, you’ll see that anyone who keeps going, keeps learning, and sticks through the struggle eventually reaches real competence and this applies to every skill in life not just game development.

Okay, that’s enough theory. Let’s talk about how you can actually beat that monster and how to make sure you become skilled without getting trapped in any kind of infinite loop.

First, you only need to learn the basics of your tool. If you understand the basics, you understand the foundation on which every advanced ability is built. So I recommend setting a fixed time like one week, dedicated purely to learning the fundamentals of your chosen tool. Learn what it is, how it works, and why it works that way. If you understand the “what” and “why,” you can move on to harder concepts much more smoothly.

For example, if you’re using Godot, then spend that entire week learning the basics of Godot: its node architecture, how scenes work, how simple things function inside the engine, etc. Your learning source can be anything: YouTube tutorials, Articles, Official documentation, Even AI explanations

But remember: the goal is to learn only the basics not fancy features that look cool but distract you.

Second, in the next week, stop learning new theory altogether and start applying what you learned. This week is only for implementation. Pick a simple mini-game and try to clone it by yourself. You can also build your own small idea, but I don’t recommend starting with your own original concepts immediately.

Why? Because your expectations will push you to recreate something from your favorite games, but those games were built with years of experience, so you’ll only feel overwhelmed.

Instead, clone something small and achievable. Build something that you know you can finish. This boosts your confidence and gets you into the habit of learning by doing. Implementation-based learning keeps you motivated and makes your journey much more enjoyable.

If you follow those steps you are learning by implementing things without getting trapped in any kind of loop or tutorial hell,

So if you stick to the 2nd week and reach the 3rd week congratulations 🎉👏 you finally beat your first boss battle. Now you earned a new ability of implementation and a special medal you are now officially a Game Developer 💪 🎮!

Checkpoint 4: Face Your Fears by reaching out to others

Now that you’re officially a game developer, don’t forget to share what you created during Week 2. Post it on social media, or upload it to itch.io (the best platform for indie developers to showcase their work). Even if you think your project is weird, buggy, unpolished, or “not fun enough,” share it anyway.

Nobody’s first creation is perfect not even mine. Sharing your work helps you get feedback, new perspectives, and ideas you would never think of on your own. It accelerates your learning and exposes you to insights from other developers. There are tons of amazing dev communities out there ready to support you and keep you motivated.

And I’d love to see what you build too! Share your projects with me in the comments or reach out on any of my social media. I’ll happily give you honest feedback, ideas, and discuss anything related to game development or pixel art.

Also, make your friends, family, or anyone you trust play your game. Listen to what they say, especially what they don’t like. Take notes on their feedback and update your game accordingly. Don’t feel bad about criticism; you’re still learning, and every piece of feedback is valuable. Don’t take it personally, use it to level up.

For the next step, keep building more projects and keep sharing them. Try modifying existing games with your own ideas. For example: What if Flappy Bird was vertical instead of horizontal?, What if in Pong you played as the ball instead of the paddle?, What if you combined two simple mechanics into something new?, Experiment with your creativity and share those experiments too.

If you want to learn more about the art of sharing, I recommend the book “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon. My friend introduced me to it, and it changed the way I think about creating and sharing things.

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Congratulations you’ve officially completed Level 1! 🎉
We’ll continue the journey in the upcoming newsletters, but for now, you’ve earned the title of Game Developer. So go ahead and create as much as you can!

I’m following these same principles myself. For my next step, I’m choosing a game to work on, and I’ll be sharing the entire process with you all every step, every challenge, every breakthrough.

Thank you so much for reading ☺️, See you in the next level! 🎮✨