This is a story about how I developed my passion to games.

I often ask people “How did you start playing games?”. They answer “I got a brand new computer for my 8th birthday” or “My father had a computer and he introduced me”. Well, my story was almost like that. With one difference. When I was 5 years old I used to play outdoors. There was a pretty large rock in front of my house. I loved climbing at it. Well, not everyone liked that I used to play a lot with that rock. One kid from the neighbourhood decided to speed up the things as he also wanted to play on that rock. He pushed me from behind and I hit the ground. Result? Broken leg. Tons of pain and cry, while a local doctor diagnosed, that the leg is not broken but only bruised. My mom called a taxi and took me to a nearest hospital.

She received a compensation and as I was going to spend two months in my room she bought me a PlayStation One. Probably the best time ever of constant playing games like Crash Bandicoot, Medal Of Honor, Medievil, Colin McRae and other.

So yeah, that’s how I became a gamer. What happened next? Until high school I had been playing a lot of games, I tried PC games, PlayStation games, Nintendo games, board games.

Somewhere in half way through high school my father asked me If I’d like to try creating stuff. You know I always admired drawing and playing with lego. He asked me if I didn’t mind attending programming course. I said “Why not. I can try.” I was the youngest guy in group but it didn’t discourage me. I finished a Java course but I didn’t feel like I had developed proper skills for programming. A few months later I took two more courses. Photoshop and wordpress and I started creating websites.Three more websites later I got an summer internship at IT company. Right after finishing high school the same company employed me for jr. javascript developer.

After a year of work as web developer I felt it’s not exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. I love experiencing stuff, I love creating stuff, I want to provide entertainment to people. Games were pretty obvious choice.

I started reading /r/gamedev reddit on daily basis. I downloaded Unity, Visual Studio and started. Just like everyone else do. Ok, but what next? I love games, but games demand tons of work to develop a great title. Of course I didn’t know that yet. So I took a platformer tutorial and step by step copied the C# code that I didn’t know, I only knew basics of javascript and some theory about object programming that didn’t escape my head after Java course.

I struggled. Struggled a lot and I was confused. “Where am I heading?” I asked myself. I work. I learn in my spare time. My friends ask me “What’s wrong? Why are you not seeing with us?”. After a year of struggling and not even finishing one game I posted on /r/gamedev what does community think about attending gamejams (these are a hackatons for game developers, you spend 24–48h closed with other people and create games together). They encouraged me to attend one. But there wasn’t any gamejam in my local area. I was so disappointed. I had no one who shared the same passion as me. I almost abandoned this bullshit dream of me becoming a game developer.

Then, suddenly I discovered a Ludum Dare. Breaking moment in my life. Ludum Dare is an online game jam where you can attend two categories. Compo or Jam. Compo is 48h and you make everything on your own. Art. Music. Programming. VFX. SFX. Food (Ok, my mom helped me and prepared a few meals for me). Jam is 72h and is not that restricted. You can use royalty free stuff and join other people group.

Of course my ambition told me to pick Compo. So I did. Fully prepared, with 4 redbulls (of course I’m not gonna sleep = big mistake). Focused state of mind. And only one goal. Finish the damn game. Nothing else matters.

I won. I finished the shitiest game ever. But it was mine. Of course I let my parents and brother play it. They kinda enjoyed it, or they didn’t want to say the truth. Whatever. I was happy. I started another project that I wanted to finish in one month. A 2D fighting game. I couldn’t finish it. Why?

Ludum Dare 38 — Treekeeper

Because there was an opportunity. A group of friends searched for a Unity developer to join them. Of course rev-share but I didn’t mind. They had pretty neat prototype and the game genre fit me so well. So I prepared a professional email, attached portfolio to it and sent. They responsed me with “We really love your portfolio and we’d like to talk with you on skype”. Don’t be happy. Don’t be happy, you’re not a part of this team yet. But I was so happy that I imagined myself working with them.

Skype call was professional but we appreciated each other work. There were fifteen people that wanted to join them. They chose me and one more guy.

I dodged a disappointment. So here I am. One year working on Sapu and still involved in web development as I have to eat.

Sapu gameplay

Next month I’m finishing one more project that I’ve been doing in my spare time (do I have one?). A mobile game development practise for me.

The future is bright. I have a plans. Sapu is not finished yet but in worst case I learned a lot. Met a great people, and expanded my horizons. My goal is to exchange my current web development job for a gamedev.

So before you judge me. Read this.