[jesse_dot_id]

This was a great read. I'm in my 40's and have mostly done web dev/devops type stuff throughout my career. Making video games has always eluded me even though I've always been interested in it. I think it's that everything feels like a brand new language I have to learn. Perhaps creating an engine is the move.

[Cthulhu_]

I'm no game developer, but I'd say don't create an engine if what you want to do is build a game. Do create an engine if you want to create an engine though.

But yeah, it is like learning a new language. But that's not a bad thing! I found messing around / following some tutorials for e.g. pico-8 to be both liberating (two characters are enough for a variable name) and educative (using functions like min/max to the fullest)

[0] https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

[bluefirebrand]

I'm not quite 40 yet, but I feel the same

I have wanted to make games my whole life but I got into web to make a living. Now it's been decades of game ideas and no implementations, just frustration. Something about unity, unreal, godot just never clicks with me

Maybe I'll try making my own engine too. Best of luck to you, maybe the both of us can make our dreams come true with a slightly different approaches

[endemic]

If you're familiar with web development, you can make games with HTML/JS, which is almost its own "engine." Think DOM elements for sprites, CSS animations for movement, requestAnimationFrame for an update loop, etc. This has the extra benefit of zero friction for players -- no native app installation necessary!

[jesse_dot_id]

I have thought about doing this via PhaserJS in the past, but it just never clicks for some reason. I feel like my brain is missing some important component for making game design make sense.

[endemic]

I wrote some tutorials for making "grid-based" games that might give you some inspiration (https://ganbaru.games/writing-grid-based-games/) It's actually kind of crazy how many different types of games work with this approach.

[jesse_dot_id]

This is great, thanks :)