Last year during my Christmas break, I had an itch to start a new side project. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to work on, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be another website. I manage a web development team by trade, so I needed something different and challenging.

While enjoying the time off, I was playing with my Nintendo Switch and downloaded Blossom Tales. If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s an indie title that can best be described as Zelda: A Link to the Past, but with slightly less charm. Blossom Tales reminded me how fun old-school video games were. Growing up in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I had always imagined how much fun it would be to make a video game. At the time, it didn’t seem like an achievable goal. Where would I even start? What would I need? Without the internet, this dream, like many others from that era, ended before it began.

Inspired by memories of childhood games and motivated by my desire to dive into a new project, I decided to finally build my first video game.

I had no experience making video games, I didn’t know any of the required programming languages, and I had no artistic talent. Additionally, I had a full-time job, a toddler, and a pregnant wife. These were all the ingredients needed for the perfect procrastination cocktail, but I was determined to overcome all obstacles in my way.

Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to come up with a solid concept. It started with me stumbling upon this post about making gooey cheese for a pizza model in 3D software. I don’t recall the exact reason that I landed on that page, but I do remember testing out Blender 3D at the time.

This 3D render from Peter Burenkov made me decide I wanted my game to be about pizza. I still don’t know why.

Maybe I was hungry when I read the post, but I knew that my first game was going to be about pizza. I started to brainstorm a bunch of ideas using plain old pen and paper. “I could have a ton of ingredients on the right side, then a bunch of customers with orders on the top, and then some pizzas on the left, and you’d grab the ingredients and put them on the pizza,” I exclaimed to myself in a flurry of pizza-inspired creativity. Admittedly the ideas weren’t that great or overly complex, but they were a start.

I was sitting on the couch sketching a bunch of over-the-top and impractical video game concepts with my toddler next to me. He was playing with a hexagon-shaped toy, attaching magnetic shapes to create 3D structures. He asked me to help him build something. I set my notepad aside, and as I grabbed the hexagon, I got my eureka moment. The pizzas I had just finished drawing had six slices, much like this hexagon in my hand. I spun the hexagon on its axis and thought: What if you simply spun the pizza and the ingredients came to you, like the falling shapes in Tetris?

The inspiration behind the rotating pizza

With the spinning-pizza concept in my mind, I began to prototype. I had already decided on Unity for my game’s framework. I deleted my current project, “Pizza Game 3D,” and began work on a new one dubbed “Pizza Game 2D.” My goal was simple: get a working prototype up and running as soon as possible. I borrowed some graphical assets through Google Images, and I had a rough demo ready within a couple of days.

I wanted to build my own assets, but I had no idea how to properly use Illustrator. I started by following a bunch of tutorials on YouTube. It’s amazing how many free resources are at our disposal in the 21st century. Back in the ’90s, my ideas would have ended before they even began. In this current era of information, the tools are easily accessible and the only limitations are motivation, time, and willpower to learn. In January alone, I learned C#, familiarized myself with Unity, and discovered the wonderful world of vectors in Illustrator.

My first pizza topping, the pepperoni, took me roughly five hours to make. The second topping took a bit over an hour. I now average about 15 minutes per topping and have a couple dozen finished.

By February, I had this ugly demo up and running.