Once upon a time, in the land of 16-year-old me, I had a dream: to make a video game. I knew nothing about game development, but then I stumbled upon the Unity game engine and began my two-year quest to learn design and coding. It was my first real side project, complete with all the guilt that comes with taking forever to finish it.
I taught myself C# and Adobe Illustrator, and I bugged my older brother (a software engineer) to help me with the more difficult parts of my code. I even convinced my dad (a musician and sound engineer) to make the game’s soundtrack based on the song “White Fields” by Montmartre. I made many failed attempts at the game’s UI, and I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my professional life: if you don’t know what you’re doing, copy someone else. Eventually, you’ll figure out how to do it on your own.
I even learned a thing or two about animation to make a promo video:
I published the game on the iOS and Android app stores, but it was eventually taken down. Apple charged $100 a year for a developer account, and my game wasn’t making any money, so I didn’t renew it. Google once sent me an email asking for an update, but I was busy and they took it down too. The game lived on in my Google Drive, and I would occasionally send an APK file to friends who wanted to try it out.
But now, on this fateful weekend, I thought: why not compile it to JavaScript and let it live in people’s browsers? Agasc, a game about spinning circles, is now live at https://agasc.hugodutka.com and you can play it for free. It’s a neat little thing, and I think you’ll love it.