The Challenge #
So, a few weeks ago I started a six-week seminar for indie video game developers, and we were presented with lots of really cool tools and frameworks that I’m already using and incorporating into everything I’m doing, even beyond games. But also, a great community started, and through this community I was introduced to the greatest learning framework for game developers I’ve ever been exposed to. I know it might already be obvious for some people (it should even be obvious for me, as this is how I actually started my game dev journey in a GameDevTV course on Udemy): you start by learning from studying the classics by reproducing them, just as with any other form of art, especially painting.
This was introduced by another student in the community, and I’ll be forever grateful. I have turned my vertical monitor wallpaper into the list of games that the challenge proposes, and the idea is to reproduce each game without using tutorials and by oneself. I’ve started with the first one already: “Pong”, and I already feel I’m learning a lot. I remember the first time I did a clone of a classic: it was Arkanoid, but within a course using Unity. This current experience is even better, and I’m using Godot. In just one week, I’ve had to teach myself how to do local multiplayer using gamepads and ideate a way to select and assign controllers. I hope to be able to soon do a devlog for the project. In the meantime, I’m just going to have as much fun as possible and enjoy this learning journey that has me more motivated, more excited, and more engaged than ever.
You can check the challenge by yourself on this page over here: The 20 Games Challenge or in this video:
I can attest to the effectiveness and enjoyment of the process it proposes.