My Journey Into Game Development

Have you ever been curious about what it takes to create your own game? At the start of 2024, I decided to find out for myself. The purpose of this post is to simply document my experience learning game development. I'm going to highlight both the successes and failures I've experienced. Some of these experiences have completely changed my perspective.

My Background and What Led Me Here

I've always been interested in design and illustration, which led me to create flip books and eventually stop motion. Soon, I discovered the world of animated content on Newgrounds and YouTube. I was heavily inspired by these online animators—David Firth was a huge inspiration. This led me to opening up Microsoft Paint and Windows Movie Maker to create my own cartoons for my friends. 

Around this time, I discovered Blender 3D and began learning how to model 3D objects. All of these creators eventually led me down a path to study visual effects and motion graphics after high school. 

My day job is motion design. Most of my work has been for ads, documentaries, and TV shows. Lately, I've been wondering if my current career is the culmination of my drive and inspiration over the years. During college, I saw many people lose their drive, and I almost did as well. I learned that you have to remind yourself why you decided to pursue your passions in the first place. If you don't know this reason, you need to reflect and ask yourself why. For me, that reason has always been to share stories that move and inspire others.

I'm realizing that I'm at that point again where I need to ask myself: Am I fulfilling this purpose?

Realizing My Strengths and Weaknesses

Coming from this design-oriented background, my strengths were polish and detail. In retrospect, these quickly became my weakness. I used my design and animation abilities as a crutch. I often told myself that I was learning game development, but really, I was just wasting a lot of time by focusing on design and animation before I even had the foundations to make a game. Something needed to change.

I dove headfirst into YouTube tutorials from many great instructors, but I'd always run into obstacles that I did not have the skills to solve on my own. It became clear that I was lacking several fundamentals. I needed something fully comprehensive. This led me to investing in more thorough courses.

I started with some courses from James Doyle on Udemy. I've learned to create better character controllers, respawn points, coin collection systems, as well as health bars and obstacles that injure your player. This is the furthest I had ever been with programming my own game, and this course was great, and I planned to finish it. But I realized I wanted to create my own assets, and for that, I did not want to start with 3D. While I have experience with creating 3D models, I wanted to start with something simpler—a 2D platformer.

For several years, I've been watching Thomas Brush's content on YouTube. I've always enjoyed his videos. Given his background in marketing and design, I decided to give his Full-Time Game Dev course a try.


I purchased it during one of the Black Friday sales, right before the end of 2023. I was excited to start something brand new that was fully comprehensive. His course teaches you how to build a simple 2D platformer game kit that you can customize with your own designs as well as mechanics. What really sold me on Thomas's course was the information he provided on marketing and launching your game. It doesn't matter how great your game is—if no one knows it exists, then no one will be able to play it.

The courses from James Doyle and Thomas Brush changed my perspective on what I'm capable of. I now have the confidence that if I continue on this journey, I'll at least have a chance of sharing stories with people that they might enjoy.

Where I Am Currently

Thanks to my girlfriend, who is a designer, we have a main character, which I've then animated in various states for running, jumping, and attacking. 

I then learned how to implement these into the character controller, and we are developing a simple story and trying our best to maintain a very small scope for this game. We're going to post updates probably every couple of months, but check back in as we do plan to increase that frequency.

I dedicate this journey to my uncle John, who passed away a few years ago. He was inspiring in so many ways and a great man of faith. We both shared an interest in God as well as in animation and game development. We often had conversations about the projects we were working on. 

Shortly after his passing, I was going through our messages when I noticed a link he had shared to James Doyle on Udemy. It had been a while since I had opened up a game engine, but this reignited my interest in learning game development. My uncle was much further along than me, and with each new obstacle that I face, I think of the questions that I'd ask him as well as the new projects that he might have worked on.

I don't know how large of a role this journey will play in my life, but I'm enjoying the process of learning this challenging new medium. If you made it this far, I'm truly grateful for your time. Thank you.