This article was originally posted here: https://msanatan.itch.io/metwo/devlog/265917/making-metwo
Hey everyone! Time for a long-overdue postmortem on MeTwo.
This game was made for the Jammin 2021 game jam, whose theme was reflection. My inspiration was those fun 2D Zelda puzzles where you’d step on a tile that made a copy of you, and you’d have to use that copy to push objects or step on switches to open the door. If the copy got hit by an enemy or certain obstacles, it would disappear - that mechanic fit perfectly with my time and it was a great way for me to express my love for Zelda!
Day to day development
I recorded most of the progress I made on Twitter! Check it out: https://twitter.com/marcussanatan/status/1405117028239921153
It’s hard to do a lot of game dev with a full-time job and a pandemic, but it’s worth it.
Goals achieved?
Yes and no. My original vision for the game, artistically and mechanics-wise was not met. However, I was to put a lot of Unity skills I learned in tutorials into practice.
Learning Unity
I started this course: https://www.gamedev.tv/p/learn-c-sharp-unity-developer-2d-for-video-game-development. It’s meant for beginners, so the coding part is way below me but I’m pretty new to Unity. It’s thorough, but a bit slow. I didn’t learn half the things I needed to make this game. That’s no fault of the course, I only finished the 4 introductory sections but I’m only halfway through the first “real game”. However, this course is great because it teaches you how to fish instead of giving it to you.
I knew enough to structure my project and code, and I found other resources to fill the gaps. Of course, Brackey’s YouTube channel is still a source of relevant, amazing tutorials. Lesser known, but more recent and also amazing is samyam. Her tutorials got me mastering Unity’s input system in no time. If you’re new to Unity, I highly recommend both of them.
Next steps
So as the host of Jammin, I got a few non-game dev things to wrap up first. However, my priority is to look over the artwork and get it more in line with what I wanted. I’m taking a pixel art course by HeartBeast, who also happens to be a great Godot developer with lots of tutorials himself.
Once the new designs are settled I’ll be more interested in adding new levels with some enemies, switches, a couple of fireballs. I’ll make a few levels a bit larger to do some camera tricks.
It’s going to be fun so stay tuned in!