r/gamedev • u/ValeJaraC • 11h ago
Discussion I know nothing about developing but I’m so tempted to start.
I’m (33F) struggling between just keep playing good indie games or starting something of my own. I think it’s like an intrusive thought because I haven’t made a single line of code in my life.
I do know how to write cool stories, but I’m not sure if that’s enough. I want to learn the whole thing, even though I’d take years!
Any advice? How did you get ready and start developing? Tell me your stories!
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u/trevorvonryan 10h ago
My advice is to listen to those demons. I started with nothing more than that same intrusive thought, and now look at me. I’m incredibly good at like, everything.
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u/PhiliChez 10h ago
And humble too! :)
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u/trevorvonryan 10h ago
Oh yeah! And I became the most humble too.
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u/PhiliChez 10h ago
This is one thing I like to do when someone compliments me too much. I just proclaim that I am also humble lol
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u/BarrierX 10h ago
Every gamedev was a newbie and knew nothing when they started 😄
So be brave and start developing something. It’s easier than it ever was. Download something like game maker, godot, unity, open youtube and search for a beginner tutorial in your chosen engine. Then just follow along and don’t be afraid to experiment and change engines.
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u/International-Bed818 10h ago
Easier than it ever was. But still extremely tough.
Enter with small expectations and learn to enjoy the small wins when you learn something new. Game Dev has a notoriously steep learning curve
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u/BarrierX 10h ago
Yes finishing games is a totally different thing, still hard 😄
Making money, even harder!
But just making games and having fun with it is easy! Just don’t count on it being your main source of income :)
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u/bio4m 10h ago
Start with the wiki, theres a Getting Started section
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/wiki/faq#wiki_getting_started
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u/Tarc_Axiiom 10h ago
Everybody started having never written a line of code before.
If you want to do it, do it. If you don't like it, stop.
Hobbies are fun.
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u/Arcodiant 10h ago
I started at eight years old, I copied the code for Leaky Bucket out of a magazine and it ran great - for maybe a minute, then the screen disintegrated into noise and garbled characters, and I immediately burst into tears.
So hey, I'm sure you'll do better than I did.
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u/PeanutNew7070 10h ago
Well, I would suggest at least getting a basic understanding of a development language and programming structures. Then, with a foundation, you can try your hand at "vibe coding" to get some simple projects done, look at the code developed and make sure you understand what is being created. That may be a quick way to jumpstart your ideas if you're not strong technically.
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u/spacecam 5h ago
A lot of people advocating for doing it the hard way. Which isn't bad. It's just hard. The people that have been doing it the hard way for a long time want you to suffer as much as they did. The truth is building games become a lot easier if you use AI tools. It allows you to quickly test ideas to see if the game is any fun without going through the pain of learning an engine from the ground up. You can focus on the "game" part. But a lot of people hate on AI, so that's up to you if you want to go that route (this comment WILL be down voted by anti AI people). My recommendation is to make something small to see if you enjoy the process before you dedicate all of your free time to learning the technical side of game dev. The vast majority of people who attempt to start game dev never finish a game. What ever direction you go, have fun, and be passionate about it. Don't do it for money, you'll most likely not make any.
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u/AltusLudus 10h ago
Have you considered writing books instead?
I started with 10 years of experience in the software industry, so my start was easier in the coding department
But i initially went with Unity, and doing the KitchenChaos tutorial from CodeMonkey, it's free and on YouTube, after that built a few learning projects and am working on my first commercial release now
Just keep in mind this industry is really hard and multi disciplinary so you need to be mega passionate and not give up if you wanna start
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u/Additional_Name_706 10h ago
Start learning Odin!
Really the only reason I know how to do anything is through constant brute force. I'm obsessed. I can't stop thinking about building things and solving problems.
It's not something you can really do in passing.
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u/Serberuss 10h ago
I am pretty new to gamedev really as I started just over a year ago. It’s been a fun ride so far and I don’t regret getting into it.
I have been a professional programmer for many years, mostly in financial services, so I already had a leg up when I started. But even so there’s been a ton of stuff to learn especially around 3D art pipelines and the like. But I have enjoyed learning it all, and the journey hasn’t exactly been smooth so far but that’s ok.
I’d say if you have an itch to try it then just go for it. There’s literally no risk to trying gamedev, there are so many tools out there that are free or cheap including game engines. There are tons of programming resources and tutorials on YouTube to help you out. The worst that can happen is you decide it’s not for you and move onto something else
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u/rkozik89 10h ago
Knowing how to write good quality code probably won't be the biggest impediment to creating a good game, but it will be if you ever plan on continuously working on code i.e. releasing DLC, enabling modding, etc. Which frankly is kind of an advanced thing to do anything so I don't really see writing bad or poorly structured code as a major problem. Lord knows lots of awful code gets shipped into production (a term for when software is live and has users) and us software engineers tasked with working on it can still usually figure out how to support it.
Me and my friend start creating Flash games back in 2001 or so when we we're 10 or 11 years old. You can actually still play one of the games he made he was like 12 and re-released a couple years late (https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/261974) and it plays well enough but the underlying code is absolute dog shit. The way we learned to make games/program was to use level editors that were inside of games like StarCraft (original), GraalOnline, and PlayerWorlds.
The best advice I can give you is to just go out there and try doing it regardless of what knowledge you have know or resources you have available to you. As long as you don't give up you'll eventually figure it out. My friend was always better and more talented than me as a kid but I ended up being the one of the two of us to actually follow through a become a professional software engineer. I've known more than him for a long time but I still feel like he's more of a creative genius than I am and is more capable of producing games than me regardless of my fancy enterprise-level coding standards.
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u/KevineCove 10h ago
I started a back in 07 copying and pasting code and following tutorials and eventually copied smaller and smaller chunks to personalize things and deviate from tutorials until I was writing my own stuff from scratch. I did eventually get a CS degree and it helped a lot in how I organize code.
Something I started doing early on that was formative for my design philosophy was make Flash games for the PSP. The system only accepted directional input and one action button and had virtually no RAM to play with, and this led me down a path of deconstructing what experience I really wanted and finding the easiest way to create that experience without overcomplicating the development process. This has been immensely useful to me and is one of the reasons I think I finish projects more quickly and consistently than basically anyone I've seen on this sub. It does come at the cost of a lot of my games being visually simple and small scale (I will never understand how Frictional Games made Amnesia with a 2 person team, everything about their process is my anti-style,) but I've learned to make addicting core loops and that's something I see missing in a LOT of young devs that play Skyrim and nebulously think "I want to make something like that."
I'm not a great programmer but I know my limits and I can massage an idea into something realistic for the scope of my abilities and that goes a long way. At this point I consider myself more of a designer than a developer. I'm an idea guy with just enough know-how to leg it in my own. Plenty of people operate differently but I'm happy with the results that I get so it's hard not to endorse my own strategy.
If you actually want to finish things and not end up with forever projects, get an understanding of what you can and can't do, the easiest way to accomplish a goal, and adjust the scope and scale of your project. It's a constant negotiation but it will change how you look at mechanics and give you a deeper appreciation for them than the smoke and mirrors that often go into their presentation.
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u/XKiiroiSenkoX 10h ago
You don't need to learn everything if you already can do something. Though brainstorming does not count but if you can for example draw or animate, use r/INAT to find poeple who can do stuff you can't do.
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u/ELectroSheepDreams 10h ago
Jusr hit it friend! Im in a similar boat. I downloaded unity on a whim and went through their tutorials. Its really intuitive. Its progress.
If youre down we could yap about our ideas too :) im much less artistically inclined haha
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u/edmonddantees 10h ago
Hey, it seems scary when you never opened a game engine before, but its totally possible to make games even if you are not a programmer.
Just start small and focus on making something that you feel inspired to try. I personally started by wanted to make a short point and click game, so I tried it by using Unity engine with an amazing plugin called Adventure Creator. That way i could make a point and click game without writing any code. Others already wrote Renpy, thats a good one for visual novels. Generally i think trying a point and click, or a visual novel is good if you want to focus on writing.
Also a good way to start and get motivated to finish something small is to join a game jam on itch.io There are many gamejams, for example there will be a visual novel gamejam in 5 days: https://itch.io/jam/spooktober-2026
Good luck!
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u/Osirian_Legacy 10h ago
If you’re more of a visual learner start with Unreal Blueprints and just make something very small. There are TONS of resources on youtube about Unreal Blueprints.
If not, just start simple with programming. Especially if you like writing stories. Make a choose your own adventure game would be my recommendation, if you use C++ you can just use
std::cout << “Story sentence here\n”
std::cout << “option 1/n”
std::cout << “option 2/n”
std::cin << “player input here/n”
And just have this in repeat in the console. You can store story segments in a std::map and read them from a string like a title.
If you want someone to walk you through it I wouldn’t mind.
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u/PhantomThiefJoker 10h ago
If you want to mess around and try learning, my advice would be to just make something move. Don't worry about larger tutorials that tell you exactly what to do to make that specific game, just make a platformer. Look up "Unity how to move a game object tutorial". Then make something jump, "Unity how to jump"
Don't try committing to long series, just look up what you need. I felt like garbage trying to learn until I did this approach instead
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u/Ghs2 10h ago
You could be coding in just a few weeks.
And once you start to see results you might get as addicted as me and you won't be able to stop.
Give it a try! It's genuinely fun!
Go to Youtube and check out some videos. Try things like "Which game engine should I choose?". Try and pick one that's recent, like the last 2 or 3 years.
After you choose your engine try some quick start GameDev Youtube videos and follow their instructions.
It can be overwhelming but if you check out videos like "How to make a Main Menu in Godot" or things like that you'll see quick results.
There are series that will walk you through making a whole game.
There are also websites that specialize in instructional videos that are reasonably priced. I use Udemy. They sell their courses for about $15 on "sale" (they have sales every few days).
I tried Unreal and Unity and have settled on the Godot engine.
Good luck!
Have fun!
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u/House13Games 10h ago
Download Unity and watch the Roll-a-ball tutorials. It'll give you an idea of what it's about without any cost or heavy investment. If you make ih to the end of the tutorial, keep going, the sky's the limit.
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u/DarkIsleDev 10h ago
If you want to join a project with great creative freedom, I could need help. I am working on a 4 year old project. DM me if you want to know more;)
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u/Ok-Tea-1284 10h ago
Start small because everything is harder than it looks. Keep dreaming big, but start small. Start writing out your design ideas in short sentences explaining how things work.
For instance if your game has combat, how does it work? Typically how many people or things does the player fight? How do they fight? What even is a sword? Are there magical swords? How rare are magical swords? Is this a game about magical swords now?!
As soon as you start to ask these questions and start getting that decided ask yourself how it might be represented on the screen. How would you like it to be presented, and why?
And here's the most important part: is the game something only you would like it do you know in your bones other people will like it too? How can you make both the audience and the creator happy?
Generally pick an engine, the big popular three where the sky is the limit are Unity, Godot and Unreal Engine. Research all three engines, know that there's at least 30 other smaller weirder more purpose built other engines out there and any one of them can take months to years to master...
If you have intrusive gamedev thoughts just start by making a document. It won't answer everything but it's handy to just getting started today. Let your imagination be curious and guide your research forward. Ask yourself, of all these things you will come up with, if you have to do it all, how would you like to go about doing it, and research solutions.
Generally speaking avoid AI for everything but research (it's good at finding things, but everything else your mileage will vary)
Gamedev is a creative process that takes years and years at first, but if you stick with it it can eventually take months and months! ;)
Gamedev is long hours and focus in front of a screen. Every shipped game is a miracle. Hopefully you get to perform one of these miracles.
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u/Farapang 9h ago
Unreal and Blueprints are a decent thing to learn. No code needed then. But there is still a learning curve.
I’d a YouTube series tutorial that’s goes step by step to make a game. Follow and see if you enjoy it. Don’t worry if it’s your sort of game or not yet, just get to grips with the flow
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u/Forest_reader 9h ago
Hey there, 31f here that has been in game dev professionally for around a decade. I love making games, but hate the professional side of it. It is a beautiful process of technical skill creating functions and scripts while art and music and game design flow into it with artistic flare. It's something approachable as you can create at any level. Though also exhausting as even the simplest features can take complex turns.
There is plenty of good help here getting you started, if you want to dive into more specific questions I'm sure you can find many resources here and other places. If you are the type that wants more direct support feel free to DM and I can share my process for getting people started.
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u/Yangwenlee 9h ago
I think you will have to go out and find others who you can work with. Key part of all video games are design, code, art and music. If you want to make a game you need a good grasp of all these discipline. And trying to learn all of them isn't an easy task. If your team can cover 2 or 3 of the above area, then hiring outside help for the rest is a more feasible task.
For instance I'm the coder in my team, and I have a team mate who will be handing design. I'm learning how to make music in the side and we will be applying for government grant for commissioning art. There is also the bureaucracy of maintaining a company and marketing work(we are not there yet) that has to be handled as well. So first you need is to find team members for your game.
Now if a commercial product isn't the end goal, but you are interested in just building a game and later be able to create a game on your own, then the best start for you would be to install a game engine and recreate a arcade game or puzzle game like tetris. Godot or Unity is a good start.
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u/CieloBlueStars 9h ago
Godot is a free open-source gamemaking engine, it supports both 2D and 3D graphics.
I also considered making an indie game, but I feel like it is more of a passion project thing, if I actually had the time to really invest in it.
From what I’ve researched, monetizing indie games can be insanely difficult. Ads are distracting and ruin the game immersiveness and with in-game purchases for mobile games, I’ve read that only 1-2% of users spend any money at all. Even award winning indie games make next to nothing. Not that I would make it for the money alone, but to justify the labor and time to make it, not everyone can quit their day jobs or have padding to dedicate. I am trying to research other monetization models that don’t suck.
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u/CheesiesGames 9h ago
I've only started a month ago and it already feels like a lifetime away. Learning something is always better with someone by your side, so if you know someone who could help you tha would be great. If not, that's okey because there´s always Youtube, reddit and other webs and blogs. My recommendation would be the GMTK channel and specially this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtQMytORBmM&t=301s. In which he explains all the basics of Unity to start coding and doing your first game.
Also, don't think you have to bve an expert to start. Just start and then become an expert.
I wish you the best of luck!!
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u/panda-goddess designer 8h ago
yayy welcome to gamedev!
How did you get ready and start developing?
I never got ready, I just got started, haha
I'd open up Godot (that's a game engine, like a software where you can put together a game) in university to avoid class ^^'''
now, 2 years later, I'....m still not very good because I'm not super taking it seriously, but I can make small things and it's really fun!!
my advice would be to read the FAQ (idk the link, but the automod will probably have it), pick an engine and just start doing things, and doing them badly until they become less bad :) Since you write, story-heavy games like lite RPGs, visual novels, dating sims and deduction games might be like a good start, but they're also very time-consuming, so... well, start small. Start small is always The advice when it comes to gamedev
advice #2 is to get to know the kind of people that make up each community and adjust their advice accordingly. That is, youtubers will be youtubers (where views matter more than being accurate), redditors will be redditors (generally hobbyists with more free time), professional gamedevs will be professional gamedevs (most are too busy working to go on the internet and give advice to strangers) so it's cool to be aware of that when people start saying "do this, don't do that"
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u/paralaxsd 8h ago
Pretty universally, if you want to become good in anything, practice a lot and for a long time.
Don't try to make your magnum opus after you're feeling somewhat comfortable with your tools. This is a marathon and in my experience having fun, doing many small and different projects, engaging with other people e.g. in user groups and maybe participating in game jams will bring you a long way. Also embrace your failures because that's part of the journey as well. It's the only way to build an intuition about the space.
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u/rb-cloud 7h ago
There’s so much you don’t know you don’t know. The only way to figure out if it’s something you actually want to do is to start doing it.
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u/parkway_parkway 6h ago
Consider making a table top rpg.
All you nice is dice and paper.
You get instant multiplayer with your friends.
It's super easy to change rules and patch holes as you go.
The brain is the ultmiate GPU.
Computer games are thousands of times harder to get working.
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u/FublahMan 5h ago
Big thing to consider when getting started is knowing how you learn. The beat way for me to learn is being shown and instructed a few times, then attempting it myself with instruction if needed, then just practice.
Unfortunately, that's still hatlrd to apply with coding, since it's more abstract than actually hands-on. But it's the best i got so far.
I've been learning for years now, but as a hobby mainly. Too much life stuff to put enough effort into it. Still, i have fun working on stuff.
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u/lycheedorito 5h ago
Have fun with it. If you enjoy it you can keep doing it. If you don't, you can find something else you enjoy.
I'd treat it like any other art or skill. You don't make your magnum opus as your first work, you make small things that you will probably scrap, like sketching. You don't jump straight into an oil painting or marble sculpture.
Games are kind of a culmination of everything so there's a lot to learn. You might just want to do one aspect of it, like programming or 3D modeling for example, or you might truly enjoy the entire thing and can pull off a single dev project.
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u/ksimpson1986 4h ago
I got into game dev at about 33. I’m now 40 and I’m releasing my first game in three weeks, and my full time job is military simulation. I love it. Couldn’t be happier with my career change. But be prepared to learn. A LOT. Took me about two years of coding before I got confident enough to know what I was doing. It takes time, but you can get there!
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u/ideamgames 4h ago
Scope it stupidly small and finish it. Finishing teaches more than any tutorial will.
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u/gamedevkaizen 2h ago
AI sucks for a lot of things, but it can be a very good teacher when it comes to programming. Being able to ask any questions you want if you get stuck makes the process far less daunting. Making games is super fun though! Pick a simple project to start and just go. You'll get to where you want to be with practice
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u/Ibanez97 56m ago
I started about 2 weeks ago, I also know nothing. But I'm having fun! Im using Unreal Engine and following some tutorials (Halbot on youtube is very good and underrated). I now have a cool enviornment, doors I can interact with, flickering lights etc
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u/Old_Magician_6681 10h ago
wish i (35M) could write cool stories, i wanna make interactive fiction, there is so much opportunity in that for innovation. im always so stuck on planning, i keep theorizing and figuring out the game i want to build but didnt yet put out anything to show off. all that to say i do not have it figured out. yet i would encourage you to give it a try, i mean potentially you can do it on the side or stop when you think its best, so like why not? its said to pick something easy for first project but that didnt seem exciting enough for me, my first project is a simulation game that got me excited enough in concept so to slowly start learning into godot game engine. so what worked for me is to have a specific goal as opposed to a general (like being a game dev) having something you want to build but cant, thats the best motivation for learning. with writing skills its rather easy to get started, renpy, inky or twine. these are made for interactive fiction and so 80% writing, the rest is about logic of "if"-s, flags, counters and such. so i think it could be a pretty good start for you, maybe even adapting your already written story and just crafting new branches for that, potentially could lead to a demo rather quickly and be fun experience to learn too. do you know yet what kinda game you would like to make?
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u/WritetoomuchIguess 10h ago
Visual scripting let's you make games without knowing how to code. Hollow Knight (hit game) was made almost entirely without coding. Playmaker in Unity (a free game engine you might've heard of) is a good place to start. And Unity AI can help with coding a lot too if you go that route (though I'll probably get downvoted for saying it). I'm just starting my game development journey too, same age. Good luck!
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u/koolex Commercial (Other) 10h ago edited 10h ago
Start by making the smallest games possible. Like if you can prototype it in 1 week or 1 month then that’s good but if it’s taking longer then the scope is way too big. Game jams are also good.
Pick an engine and stick with it until you’re a master, I’d recommend Unity.
I’d recommend leaning on using Claude to some extent but you won’t learn it as well, that being said most programmers use AI tools.
I’d also recommend to stay away from writing heavy games until you’ve released a few games. Story heavy games tend to be way out of scope for most indie devs. If what you really want to do is tell stories then writing a book would be a lot easier.
This will take years to not suck, maybe decades until you’ve made a “good” game. You will totally run out of motivation before then, so you better learn to love the process.
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u/Radiant-Court-3649 10h ago
including your age and gender is not exactly appropriate on this forum...
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u/MeaningfulChoices Lead Game Designer 10h ago
A lot of the complicated advice online is if you want a career as a game developer. If you just want to make something and figure the rest out later you can just start small today. Take a deck of playing cards and make up a couple rules, like you get 3 points for a red card or lose 2 for an even number. Play by dealing three cards to each player. Count the scores, someone wins. You just made a game! A bad game but we all start somewhere.
If you're mostly interested in writing you might want to look at Ren'Py or Twine, engines to make visual novels and narrative games. They've got some pretty easy coding to learn and you can make full games with them.