[AlchemistCamp]

I just copied things I already knew about. I did a tutorial for a side-shotter flash game. Then I made a breakout/arkanoid clone, which was much harder for me. Then I made "Tetris with a shop to buy blocks". That one took me almost a month.

The code was ugly, but each project got more sophisticated than the one before and showed me the value of certain techniques (after having done things in a more difficult way without them).

Tutorials are fine, but you really need to work on your own projects afterwords and use what you've learned. You'll get stuck and have to struggle through parts, and in the process learn quite a bit. Start with smaller projects and work up to bigger ones.