The pain and pleasure of gamedev

What to do when you finish working on your first game ever? You start to do a new one! To the Core is only the second game I work on, and even tough it's flawed, I'm really proud of the work Ornelas, Stealthix and myself were able to do. After finishing The Incantation, a game I used to learn a lot about programming and gamedev, I felt the need to keep going and learn even more from the next game, a feeling shared by Ornelas, who's also a newbie like me. Stealthix came back as a great and patient mentor, capable of making the more complex aspects of programming easy for a begginer to understand, and I don't see a future where I won't be grateful for all the time he took to teach me new things.
The first game I've ever worked on took a month to be completed. The idea, then, was to amp things up and try to finish a project in half the time, two weeks. Lucky for us, the LowRezJam 2019 was about to begin. After getting a list of possible themes, I started to write a couple of design documents, to put some game ideas in place. One of these earlier ideas included a flashlight mechanic, used to protect the player from enemies; at the same time, important objects would only shine in the dark. It was a risk-reward kind of idea.
While we were discussing these first ideas, and if the scope of each project could fit our schedule, the Buddy Jam 9 also revealed its theme, "terraforming". That was when Stealthix proposed we could apply the flashlight mechanics to a spelunking game, making a quick mockup to demonstrate his idea.

With this mockup art in hand, I wrote the first version of the design document (available in the repository of the game). The name 'To the Core' was created and the concept of a claustrophobic anxiety-inducing game came to life. The limitations on resolution from LowRezJam became an important feature of the game, that should limit the vision of the player, who would need to find his way through the sound; and by the sound the player should also know when an enemy was getting close, increasing the fear of something dangerous hiding in the dark. Of course this could only work with a great sound design, and I feel really lucky to have Ornelas as a partner and a friend through these and other projects.

The process of building the game was hard to me; I never studied too much math, and dealing with procedurally generated levels was the biggest challenge I had since deciding to give gamedev a try. Lucky again for me that Stealthix was always ready to help, and guide me while I wrapped my head around 2D arrays. Pro-tip: in basic math classes, when you think matrices are dumb and won't get you anywhere in life, slap yourself in the face.

This was a much more complex project than the last one, and being only the second game I work on, it was quite a challenge to deal with procedurally generated levels. The result is a game that could use lots of tweaks and polishing, but of which I'm really proud. The core idea of the game, to have a tense atmosphere, is really well implemented; thanks in great part to the amazing sound design of Ornelas. And I still have much to thank Stealthix, for his continued support on my understanding of more complex programming tools, and helping me evolve as a programmer. It was great working with you guys, and I look forward to future projects.

What's next? More games, I guess! Let's keep working and learning, and maybe in the future it might become the best paying job I ever had.