Part of giving this whole “making a game” thing a try is learning that making a game takes a long time. Like, a LONG time. Even thinking I understood that a few days ago when I cautiously announced I would be doing this could not prepare me for the realization of just how long it is going to take to make a worthwhile game.

After spending hours changing how the starting bedroom looked, making sure the events worked the right way, and figuring out how to add in the player’s picture to their text box, it hit me that if I can spend 3-4 hours finishing one small bedroom, it is going to take me a LONG time to do anything big.

And sure enough, I was right. It took me another 5 hours to design the 1st floor of the house the player will start in. Only to go and change it around again today because it didn’t work the way I wanted it to.

After finishing that up, I decided to start building the town that the player will start in once leaving their house. I now have a whole new appreciation for level/environment designers. Designing a town is really hard, and time consuming. I mean sure, you could throw down a road and a few houses and call it good. But that’s not very exciting, and doesn’t immerse players in your game. So I sat there, for two hours, trying to design the outside of the player’s house, only to scrap the ENTIRE thing and start over.

After looking up some tutorials on mapping, I went to work on it and came away fairly pleased with the outcome. Below are pictures of the 1st floor of the player’s home, and the development process of building the starting city. None of these are final obviously, as many things will probably change between now and when I am finished with this practice game.

Player’s home, 1st floor, before redesigning

Player’s home, 1st floor, AFTER redesigning

Starting city: 1st attempt at designing the player’s home

Starting Town Step 1: Grass, Roads, River

Starting Town Step 2: Bushes

Starting Town Step 3: Houses, Shops, and Lake

Starting Town Step 4: Doorways, Trees, Flowers, Rocks, Bridge, etc.

Hope you enjoyed this look at the game so far!

Make sure to go subscribe to my new YouTube Channel to follow any video updates I post about the development process!

Tutorials I found helpful today: