Just released my first game and wrote a post-mortem! Thread

Hello game developers,
So after about six months of working off and on, while at school, on this game I finally decided to publish it. I chose itch.io because of its simplicity and also because I’m not sure if I can post on Kongregate with the current music I have :/. This has been a most enriching experience and I recommend highly for people to just finish their game and get it out there. I mean currently it only has 27 views but that doesn’t matter, because the feeling of having something finished is so much more rewarding. A couple of takeaways from my experience:

So I just finished my degree in Computer Science and at my school there was virtually no classes on game development. Everything I learned was from the gamedev subreddit and Extra Credits(if you haven’t already, you must) Youtube.com. There are so many resources online that I won’t even begin to name them but just know that you have support and people are generally pretty supportive. I asked a lot on HTML5gamedev forum and I know that’s pretty specific but don’t be afraid to ask. Even the most trivial task can come between you and your game and you have to be ready to ask for help if you need to!

I used the Phaser.js engine which had pretty much everything I needed. I say pretty much because this leads me to my first point.

Like I said this was my first experience making games and had no idea where to start, but the thing is you just have to start. Look at examples, gain inspiration. Mine was Thomas Palef of 12 games in 12 weeks. I reached a point in my game where the physics engine I was using didn’t have circle to non-circle collisions. This was the first roadblock. I thought well shoot, I definitely don’t have the experience to write my own engine, what am I going to do? Moral of the story I simply added a function that used the equation to check whether a point is in a circle. Don’t be afraid to build on what is there for you.

**Art is important.** All the art was created by Anya Biryukova which was somebody I had met on the gamedevclassifieds sub. I had a hard time finding the right person for the art before I found Anya, but here are a couple tips for finding the right person.

**Be honest.** Say what you want right from the get-go. Let the artist know what they’re getting themselves into. Pay/no pay, rev share, what kind of assets to do you need and what sizes. Make sure you have all of this information BEFORE you start asking for art.

**Have a prototype.** Although not required, I think it definitely helps. It doesn’t even have to be good, it just has to get the message across. This was mine :p [Prototype] (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15582110/post-7361-0-36821100-1398321783.png )Artists are visual people, and prototypes will give them a lot of information they need.

Find something that inspires you and make it! Create, create and create. Don’t worry about it sucking, because the worst games are the ones that are never made!

Thanks for your time guys!

Oh and the game is here: [Meteroar!] (Schmevie.itch.io)