Upon checking my email this morning, one message in particular stood out. "You sold Downyflake." What?, I thought. I was at once surprised and excited, but also immediately anxious. It's felt like a year since I'd released it (actually 7 months)  and I haven't been actively "promoting" it since. It had a short spurt of attention and pay-what-you-want sales I was more than satisfied with then and I thought things had run their course. Also, it's August. For a game set in a wintry environment featuring a snowman(?) enemy, it seemed an odd time for someone to download it. Despite my immediate and uneasy feeling of exposure, it unexpectedly prompted me to pause and retrospectively consider the experience of creating and releasing my first small game. 

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The game that ultimately became Downyflake was the result of a sudden shift in my thinking and personal beliefs spurred on by a YouTube video. It was Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit - "Developing 1: How I learned Unity without following tutorials" that lit the path. It was late at night on a week-long Holiday break in late 2021-early 2022. I was on the precipice of substantial change in other areas of my life at the time and it was happenstance my mind was open to possibility: I could learn game development. Midway through the video a short ad rolled for David Wehle's Game Dev Unlocked course. For $15 I could learn how to make a short, visually striking 3D first person game WITHOUT having to learn to code. It sounded too good to be true. I mentally shut it down and went to bed. 

The next day and for the remainder of my break I watched more Game Dev-related content. I researched game engines, fundamental game development and game art concepts, and available software tools. Eventually, the Game Dev Unlocked special pricing ad rolled again and this time I jumped on the opportunity. I was hooked. 

I had no time to waste. Already in my mid-30s, I had no direct coding or development experience to speak of, no art training or background. There was a substantial amount of learning required to reach a novice skill floor, let alone proficiency. I was also deeply ingrained in a demanding career where I needed to not only remain employed but competitive, with a family I needed to not only support but remain present for. I was well behind the curve already and had limited time available to put toward learning and development. It continues to be a struggle to balance and fit game development in to my life. But I gave myself permission to pursue creative passion and fulfillment, and I was ok with starting from zero, open to possibility. Having no prior experience making games or art, or with the tools, I had to first and foremost allow myself be ok with the humility of creating and releasing something imperfect. 

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Downyflake was inherently derivative, the product of a tutorial on how to make a short game. The design for David Wehle's Game Dev Unlocked example 3D game "Abdication" entails an atmospheric first person story-driven game in an isolated snowy environment, the presence of sci-fi robot enemies which continuously seek the player, and dispersed interactable machines with flickering lights drawing the player to them to open a gate to eventual exit. Downyflake uses the same setup and game loop, and a similar environment, with liberties taken in enemy, environmental, and story design. Nonetheless, it's not a wholly original game by any means. 

One significant change I'm proud of and endlessly amused by is the enemies. The snowmen enemies were not the result of some intentional design decision by any means. I knew I wanted a different enemy type but frankly, I was having difficulty animating the 3D biped characters and needed a solution. I scoured the Asset Store for free or inexpensive assets as I worked on the project and among those I'd grabbed were the snowmen which ultimately ended up in the game. I figured I could alter their textures to more closely meet the overall retro, low-poly look of the game, colorize various versions for different enemy types, and most importantly, there would be no bipedal running animation to have to implement. The thought of snowmen hovering along after the player was just too funny and upon testing various sizes and speeds, I was happy with the eerie and winter-themed enemy type.  

Over time the snowmen enemies evolved to include various types. There are slower seeking snowmen enemies, almost entirely transparent, their spotlights eerily flashing about this way and that searching for any after dark intruders in the park. Should an intruder [player] be spotted, this signals the faster and more opaque variations across the map to hone in on the player to send them through a portal to a frozen graveyard hidden from the player otherwise in the environment. Among these more opaque and speedy snowmen with striped portal flashlight types are even speedier variants which rush immediately toward the player's position to ensure they will eventually see the creepy frozen graveyard and bizarre sci-fi elements, along with a long crevasse in the frozen landscape which routes the player back near the start of the level - the first hint at the player's demise and unreality of the scenario. There are also static transparent snowmen - intended merely to creep player's out, make them question what the hell is going on, and to hint that something is amiss and odd early on. And finally, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man-sized snowmen which seek to crush the player under the weight of their size and impossibility near the end. 

Ultimately, I had a ton of fun altering the variants of snowmen to add unexpected dynamics to the gameplay and keep players on their toes throughout. I thoughtfully and intentionally designed the variants' spawn points and times throughout the course of the game with consideration given to how many arcade machines had been interacted with to incrementally disable the exit gate. I also relished in the absurdity of the premise of hovering snowmen speeding after unwitting players with their annoying flashlights. Player feedback, however, indicated the types - particularly the transparent ghost-like variants, and the impossible-to-avoid speed demon variants intended to send player's to the portal and through the crevasse were confusing and frustrating. The enemy types and scenario could have been better-communicated. This was the clear takeaway. 

The exit gate, which I designed to only appear once the player had first been transported through the portal to the crevasse, took a considerable amount of time to [visually] code and get right. The red/green lights along its top were intended to communicate how many arcade machines remained requiring interaction to open the exit. The obsidian-like rock structure they were fashioned to was intended to convey something other-worldly and to make a clear connection to the other-wordly graveyard portal. None of this was clear to players, it became apparent through feedback, to my regret. 

As for the arcade machines: in the course, the machines requiring interactivity to disable the gate were sci-fi ATM machines with a small screen, flickering red lights above to interest players to investigate and locate them. In Downyflake, I opted for arcade machines with green flashing lights to draw players in, which turned red once the machine had been activated/deactivated(?). This was in part to do something different, a result of the assets available to me which allowed for altering, and also decided upon as they would hint at the meta "gaminess" of the game and hopefully seem out of place to players, hinting at the unreality of their being there at all. As I was learning Photoshop art for the first time, the distinct game machines gave me the opportunity to experiment with asset alteration, to hint at the themes of the game through the arcade game names, and the opportunity to practice my basic art skills to create unique games within the game. I found the incredible 8-bit tracks included as the musical themes to the majority of the machines in a music asset I had on hand from a Games, Assets, Music, and more-type mega bundle I'd purchased on itch.io a year or two prior (at the time, for the games exclusively). I felt the songs and arcade machines worked well together, balancing the retro stylings and matching themes of the individual games. I included a brief clip lifted from a friend's podcast on one hidden / easter egg machine intended entirely to surprise him. To my delight he found it upon playing at release and I kindly requested he not sue me. 

Around the environment and among the arcade machines, I included references to independent games and, in some cases, larger games I personally love, most of them in the first-person walking sim genre due to their similarity to Downyflake's design. I figured these references would either be: missed entirely, not understood, frustrate players who hate successful indie games, or excite those who "got it." I'm honestly not sure if anyone picked up on them, based on the feedback or lack thereof, but they amused me and I was happy with the additional effort it took to seek assets, alter them, and include them in the game.

I included a 1980s Buick Skylark-looking car in the parking lot for a few reasons: a reference to the aforementioned friend's podcast, an indicator that this game was set in an earlier decade and time to excuse intended design aspects which never made it in (namely cell phone/text-based conversations providing story background and context), and to fit in with the retro / arcade themes more closely. This evolved in my mind to become the overall setting and explain certain aspects of the limited story that ultimately was told. 

Here, I should mention from the outset, the Game Dev Unlocked course initially sparked a much different game design and story than what Downyflake ultimately became. The environment was designed first and initially was intended to tell a very different story - one I still have a shine to and may use in some form in the future. Constraints related to my skill development, time horizon to complete the game, assets available to me and an inability to yet create my own necessitated the eventual direction. 

I should also mention Downyflake was intended to be a crappy game. It was never supposed to be some grand creative expression, rather a learning experience. I took to David Wehle's, Thomas Brush's, and other game developers' insistence that your first couple or few games should be crappy. You need to put yourself out there, be ok with failure, get over yourself and not be a perfectionist aiming to release some grand vision to the world which takes you years to release, or likelier never gets released. I wanted to put something out there and I wanted to do it within one year. That was my goal. It didn't matter how much time I'd wasted, been otherwise busy with life and career, stops and starts and data loss and lost saves along the way. I just needed to complete a game and release it and be ok with its imperfection. After all, most game devs release many games before they have success. Sure there are anomalies like Toby Fox with Undertale, Eric Barone with Stardew Valley, etc. But these devs in many cases spent multiple years of dedicated development and had an incredible amount of luck in terms of timing and audience hunger for their particular games, genres, and art styles. I didn't want to roll the dice on a product; I wanted to learn skills, if even rudimentarily in many cases. 

To stick to my original goal, I made many sacrifices in regard to my vision, perfectionism, derivativity, and crunched for about 3 months near the end of the year when I realized I couldn't continue spending hours every week painting terrain and trees just so, deleting it all, and starting again. I had to get it done, and that resulted in very unhealthy working hours for a stint and not giving proper time, space, thought, and attention to other important parts of my life as I raced to complete that something. It also meant a ton of shortcuts were made which resulted in not only a less-than-perfect but also less-than-intended version of Downyflake I had in mind to release, even considering concessions. 

The ending in particular was rushed. Crappy Photoshopped "slides" attempted to provide rushed exposition in place of a more-feature complete version of the game, including countless hours of design thinking to devise systems which never even made it in. I intended to add some of these systems later: either text or audible character thoughts at specific trigger points throughout the game intended to explain the story, cinematic intros and outros, and various others. In the end, I was so burnt out from overworking on it as long as I had, and so swept up in the excitement of its release and exposure to a welcoming and inspiring game development community, I never got back to it. Yet. 

Life has been incredibly busy since. A brand new, even more demanding job glues me to screens during my working hours and beyond, and saps me of much-needed creative and knowledge-seeking energy. I'm committed to being a better husband, father, and friend than I had been during Downyflake's development. I'm focused on continually devoting time to three main pillars of my personal wellbeing: Health, Intellectual, and Creative pursuits, with a necessary fourth: Indulgence. Now I play games with a keen eye for their design, and keep game dev at the forefront of my mind in the majority of my free time, but I now again play games sometimes just for fun or take time out for other hobbies.

But I have numerous game ideas I wish to pursue and a focused few I'm actively pursuing as able, including an exciting collaboration. I still spend a lot of time learning, following courses,  learning to code, creating prototypes, practicing art, consuming information and books on game dev and related subjects. I sometimes let fear of failure, pragmatism, and other such notions dissuade me for periods of time. But on the whole, I'm so glad I made and released Downyflake, however imperfect, incomplete, or embarrassing. It gave me the permission to pursue creative outlet, to be ok with less than perfect, and gave me the confidence that with the right amount of focus and dedication, I can and will make more games.