One Game a Month

#1GAM, or One Game a Month, is a gaming initiative devised by Christer Kaitila, also known as "McFunkypants." Making games for the love of making them is the primary encouragment for #gamedev and #indiedev. Even if your game looks unimpressive, just making a game for the sake of making one is better than making nothing at all. Some people- especially in game jams- can make a game in two days or less. Heck, even Jayenkai makes a game EVERY WEEK! I usually see Jayenkai on the OUYA/Cortex Store with new games. You can see Jayenkai's work at agameaweek.com. A finely polished game can be created within a month. A full month of development and such means you can sort out as many details as you would like prior to release. You can do everything from the programming to all the assets for a game within a month (or less). If you aren't a solo developer, you surely can make a quality game as a team. Just know you can provide quality gaming thrills without having the budget or skill of most gaming studios.

What makes the "One Game a Month" challenge so enticing is that it encourages you to make certain games of certain themes. Whether you code everything yourself or rely on programs like GameMaker or Construct 2, you are still making games. Making games means you have a chance to express your creativity and offer quality experiences to gamers worldwide. This more importantly makes you a viable entity in the gaming realm. You could spend all kinds of money and time like with the major game development studios, or you can make your own quality titles as a hobbyist or even a fairly small game studio. A visit to the One Game a Month website features certain themes for various projects. What you obviously want to do is make your own gaming creations based on such themes.

If you want insight that you CAN create a game a month, Christer Kaitila put up this blog post showing it is DEFINITELY possible to create games within a month and every month: 12 games in 12 months (McFunkypants).

Final Thoughts... and an Announcement?

Just on enthusiasm and dedication, the One Game a Month challenge is a boon to all of us game developers ranging from hobbyists to professionals. You really can devote a month towards making a quality game within the span of a month. Some people could even make great games in less than a month- sometimes even in a week or a few days! Christer Kaitila deserves loads of credit for being such a positive insight and inspiration for making games. Why PLAY games when you can MAKE games? Give it a shot. One Game a Month offers a fine initiative.

As of this blog post, I have not considered joining in on the 1GAM challenge. However, I may challenge myself to make a game every month once I finally make my first-ever game of any kind. I just lack the confidence and the programming skill to actually make one. I do hope to eventually break out of this shell and put myself on the map as a game developer.

For More Information...

Visit the official site of the "One Game a Month" challenge at onegameamonth.com. Or to learn of the individual who makes games every week, visit agameaweek.com.





Maybe this post will grant you some confidence in making games. You can make whatever kind of game(s) you want only as long as you have the confidence and focus to make them happen. That's all for this post. I hope you enjoyed it. Please be sure to Subscribe and Follow my blog(s) for more content. Thank you for reading! Take care and be well.

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Maze Game Concept

To reach my goal of making a game, I have been working on a game prototype this week. As you could tell by the title of this blog post, it is a maze game like a Pac-Man game. I am using Löve2D to program it. I actually have rediscovered Löve2D to quickly build my game. This is kind of a simple project to try to build my first-ever game.

Early Notes and Prototype.

I won't give away many details on the specifics of my game concept, but I will offer an early image of the prototype I have been working on. Take a look:


This is a prototype of a maze game I have been working on recently. Only the walls and blocks are my own art. Most everything else (floor, water, and player) are placeholders.

Notes and Progress.

There are a lot of things to be worked on, but I am trying to learn how to program these things in. So here are a few notes I want to share about my work:

• I have mostly learned how build maps of my levels. What I have NOT mastered, though, is making maps without having to have them in their own folder. I am trying to make a sprite sheet for which I can call on individual graphics without the need to call on certain graphics in a single image. The levels I am creating are all tile-based. While using a program like Tiled Map Editor is much easier, I am using Notepad++ to build the text array. I am actually going to use Tiled to better build the levels.

• A character has been implemented, but I haven't made it properly be used around the level. I have not yet designed the level so the proper aspects of the level have proper colliders for impassable areas (walls, water, lava, etc.). The character is not to go diagonally across levels. I have to change this as well.

• I have plans to make this game available as a Flash game at first. I ultimately want this to be available for Flash, Android (maybe even Android TV), and OUYA. I have no device to test for iOS, so I am not even considering iOS at this point.

Initial Plans.

When this game is better developed, I will share more specific details on it. Enjoy what I have made for now. The initial final product will have some five levels to it. Maybe later, I will expand it to ten levels. I want to make a small game just to get it out there. The long term project will feature some ten different chapters to it, each with 10 levels. That means I am planning this to be a 100-level maze game.

I may possibly share some notes on my game outside of my blog, mostly on Patreon. So if you want to get in on some exclusive aspects of my game when they become available, support (or at least follow) me on Patreon!





I apologize for not updating my blogs recently. Now you know a little bit as to why I haven't been active on the blogging circuit lately. This will all hopefully change these times. For now, though, that concludes another post on "John's Creative Space." Thank you for reading! Take care and be well.

"Like" me on Facebook, Follow JCS, visit my Weebly site, and/or Contact Me via E-Mail!
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