Evaluate your game ideas
When starting a game development project or any project for that matter its a good idea to sit down first and evaluate your ideas. I find that writing down your thoughts on paper allows me to clearly see where my projects are heading and what the final goal should be like. Once you’ve spent some time brainstorming, charting and describing your ideas on paper its a good time to evaluate if they will be worth your time. If you do decide that a project is worth your time then set some goals and stick to them.
Finishing your games
Personally this is a tough one and I believe we all face some kind of inner demons that prevent us from finishing our projects but they can be overcome with some simple tricks.
Remember that you are one person so don’t try to re-invent the wheel and design a new engine every time you make a game project realistically, how many engines have you started and finished and then gone on to make a game with? there are plenty of game engines out there for you to use and with just a little bit of research you can find the ones that suit your projects perfectly.
RPG Maker
Unity 3D
Game Maker
Construct 2
UDK (Unreal Development Kit)
Craft Studio
Stencyl
A few good resources
here are a few good reads that I can recommend on the subject they aren’t specifically game development focused but the key elements of focusing on projects and sticking to your ideas translate across any subject.
Why cant i finish? – By Elizabeth Grace Saunders
Heres how to finish anything you start – By SSCHEPER
Final notes
Forget about stigma, no ‘gamer’ cares what engine you write your games in, all the gamer / consumer cares about is that your game is fun to play so if you feel like writing your RPG in RPG Maker or making your space shooter in Game Maker then just do it because at the end of the day your consumers will not care and any fellow dev’s who put you down for using craft studio? or stencyl are probably 12 and writing their 789,964th engine in c++ and assembly
Finally always remember why you are creating games, maybe your long term goals are to turn this into a career but initially we make indie games for the fun of it, there’s no rush to complete an indie game and that is the benefit of being an indie. Work on your games in your ‘spare time’ don’t neglect your life maintain your relationships with family friends co-workers.
