BenLap

I've been using GameMaker for quite some time now. I believe I first started using it when I was in 6th grade or so. I remember being addicted to making tiny games (I'm not sure if you could even call them that) and having my cousins try them. It was a lot of fun and it sort of became a hobby of mine. Though I wonder if my cousins played those terrible games with gritted teeth and plastered smiles.

After a couple of years or so of making crappy, incomplete games, I became a little better. My mom bought me an off-brand graphics tablet and I started making my own digital art. Then, I started tackling bigger projects (but never dared to release any of them) and had a blast doing so.

I could never finish a game, though. I usually became really busy with school or other things before a game could be completed. Sometimes the development of a game just stops when I don't know how to program a specific mechanic. It's sad when that happens.

I don't know if it's just me or does that happen to a lot of other game developers?

When I first started developing Pluck, I thought: "This'll be done in two weeks tops!" Haha, I was terribly mistaken. I didn't realize that there's so much involved in creating a simple indie game. Pluck has so many levels and each of them have to be painstakingly played through to make sure there aren't any hiccups. Creating all of the graphics by hand is a labor of love, but also very time consuming.

There have been times where I didn't have any idea how to implement a boss or some mechanic and I told myself "This is it, this is where Pluck ends," but somehow I managed to push through and get something to work right. It's always scary when you come across a situation like that. Where you have no idea how to do something and there isn't a simple tutorial you could look up. But when you finally do figure it out, the feeling is wonderful.

I hope to release Pluck in a month or so. I'm proud to say that it'll be my first complete game.

This is all very new to me. It's quite scary, really. I fear that the game will just be pin dropping onto the surface of an ocean, unnoticed, quickly forgotten. As much as I try to get the game out there, I feel as if no one hears me. Is this something I should get used to? I certainly hope not.

But then again, if the game goes unnoticed would I still be happy? Yes. Yes I would. I could proudly say "Yeah, I created a game."

And that's worth it.