[PhillyG]

My ambitious, long term goal I'm building towards is: creating an online community where hobbyists, newbies, part timers and full time pros alike collaborate on apps, websites and indy games.

I realised fairly quickly, that a great early step to achieving that goal, is via browser games that invite players to build their own levels or maps to share with their friends. People can play a game as a quick and occasional diversion with no commitment, then if they've had fun and tools I provide aren't overwhelming, they can have fun creating. At that point they are contributing to the game, learning basics of creating and gradually building confidence. Maybe later they'll go further and get involved with my public GitHub or my subreddit.

It's going to take months more to fully finish the opening game and map builder, but I've got the starts to a fairly simple 2d adventure/escape game in JavaScript that will run in any browser & play on any device. http://solarrageasylumbeta.protostart.net

I've been releasing it incrementally via a public GitHub project, with a beta version that makes it easy to jump in and play whatever feels polished at the time & a messy alpha version hidden behind a "deliberately not-secure" cheat code updated along with most of my GitHub commits.

Before starting on the game I also set up some basic overall community stuff: subreddit for (r/ProtoStart), website that sets out what the community is about protostart.net/