[rootlocus]

As a person who spent his last 6 years making EVERY SINGLE MISTAKE presented in this article, I have to agree: it's solid advice.

Unfortunately, I may not have accepted it 6 years ago. I justified writing everything myself by saying I was learning. I justified buying C++ books by saying I wanted to be a "true" game developer. Then I justified switching to another language by saying I needed faster iterations and prototyping. I spent hours and days trying to make everything work on both windows and linux.

Me and a couple of friends just released our first game on google play last week [1]. It's stupid and only our friends and family played it. We didn't monetize it (it's 100% free, no adds) and we didn't promote it anywhere. It was made in two weeks, spending a few hours each day. I'm not very proud of it, but I'm extremely proud of myself for pushing through and finishing it.

Hopefully, our next game will be something people will actually like.

1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.manabreak

[mysterydip]

Congrats on finishing something! That alone puts you ahead of probably half the game devs out there :) I've also done a few releases of smaller games to get "something" done, warts and all. Learn from it, do better on the next one.

A few months ago I had the idea to combine a bunch of mini games that I could make quickly with a defined scope that wouldn't send me down that rabbit hole, and package them together as a collection. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, even if it hasn't been a commercial success yet. Plus now it's easy to add another minigame or two as an update, which I'm working on right now. For purchasers, the value keeps increasing.

[Sohakes]

Sometimes I think about doing a wario ware style game. Can you post the link for your game?

[mysterydip]

Sure: http://elusivegames.com I'm in the process of adding a few new ganes and game modes.

[sebg]

Have been playing it quite a bit and love it! Really fun :) interestingly enough i've gotten interview questions like this before. Keep up the awesome work! Also - just because I didn't see it. You should have a mailing list that I can subscribe to in order to hear about your next game!

[rootlocus]

Thank you for the feedback! We're in the process of putting some kind of website up, we'll add the option of subscribing to the mailing list when it's up.

As it turns out, a colleague of mine in charge of recruiting wants to use some puzzles for the next internship interviews.

[sebg]

Very cool. Again - congrats on shipping!

[reidrac]

Finishing projects is a skill on itself; the article is right on focusing on what is really important, but I'm not so sure all the points are as useless as the author is presenting them.

Would you say those 6 years were wasted time?

[sebg]

You could reskin it to be a Christmas game by having Santa fill sacks of toys. Then anoyher Ruskin to make it easier bunny filling sacks of candy. :)

[sebg]

Have now beat most of the levels. Something else you could do is the max number of moves rather than the min. Especially when you get to more than 2 baskets. Identical game play just different stars awarded function...

[amelius]

That's pretty decent graphical design, given the little amount of time you spent on it.

[rootlocus]

Thank you! My girlfriend made it, she the team's artist :)

[looserof7]

You are lucky enough, you got a girlfriend with similar interests.

[pricechild]

I feel like I'm right there with John McClane!

[rootlocus]

Ha! Actually, the internal algorithm used to generate random levels is based off this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oef3MHYEC0