Core Memory Unlocked: Making memories with my children by creating a video game together
The Internet is rife with parenting influencers competing for engagement by posting about how much their children annoy them. I did something positive instead.
Parenting influencers seem to hate their children. Or love engagement. Maybe a combination of both? I grew tired of the constant parade of negativity one-upmanship. EVERYTHING IS HARD. MY CHILDREN COMPLAIN ABOUT THINGS. I CAN’T GET THEM OUT THE DOOR. It’s endless.
What about… the joy?
I had been wanting to create a new video game for a while. My job involves working closely with the games industry in helping them find success with their own creations, but my own imaginative urges were not being fully satisfied.
I also wanted to learn Godot. It’s a beautifully lightweight Open Source game creation engine. It can easily export games for PC, Mac, Linux and more. It also has a nice distinction between its workflows for 2D and 3D games (not the case for all engines), and as I was definitely going to stick to two-dimensional fun, this was perfect for me.
I have a decent amount of coding experience, so I jumped into running through the ‘Your first 2D game’ tutorial. This got some sprites moving around the screen, controlled by the player, and was a very simple game.
At this point, I hit my usual stumbling block with learning new tech: Okay, this is cool, but…. What should I actually build?
Children are great
This is where having the combined imagination of a six and four year old on tap works wonders. “Can it be about a shark that eats people?”. Why, yes. YES IT CAN. I promptly knocked up a prototype with an animated shark that could indeed hunt down the enemies and eat them. (In reality, the sprites just vanished - child friendly game!)
From there, it was a case of struggling to keep up with my children as they came up with new ideas.
“Can you shoot the enemies?” - Errr, okay, but let’s keep it child-friendly with special WATER JETS that make the enemies fall over and go to sleep.
“Can the shark do <insert whacky idea here>”- Okay, now we need a power-up and upgrade system.
“Can it have a dinosaur in it that helps you?” - Introducing Mr Dinosaur who rampages around the screen when you collect him!
Avenger Sharks came naturally as a name to be given to this sheer madness.
My own ideas got to creep in as well. I had grown up with games such as Llamatron on the Amiga (itself inspired by Robotron: 2084, originally released in 1984). These were twin-stick shooters (one stick moves, the other aims your shots) and formed the core gameplay style. ‘Zany’ is the word that captures the style of Llamatron.
This meant that different enemies were given different characteristics: Some would chase you. Some would move randomly. Some would be a bit erratic. That’s also a homage to Pac-Man where each ghost has its own AI (Blinky will always chase you, Clyde switches between chasing or fleeing, and so on).
As we clearly had a game involving a shark out for vengeance, the story needing setting up! Thus a cute intro sequence was created involving the shark’s fishy friends being kidnapped. Yes, in this game the shark likes to be friends with fish, and collecting them allows him to build up power for a special FISH FRENZY attack. Wholesome.
Suddenly, with all of this going on, it starts to look like an actual game.
Publishing it TO THE WORLD!
As I made more updates to the game, implementing everything that was spilling out of our combined heads, I thought that maybe, just maybe, other people might want to play this?
I started by putting pre-release versions on indie-game platform itch.io. This allowed me to get early feedback, and even an optional ‘Tip’ of $2 (At last, I can quit my day job and go full-time!).
After the game matured a bit more (like a fine wine), I put everything together in order to get the game published on Steam: a game distribution platform that boasts 132 million daily active users. This involved a lot of fiddling with Photoshop to get the artwork capsules in place, including the creation of an actual game logo.
I was never intending to try and make any money from this game: It was built for FUN and to give my children a taste of what this whole game development thing is all about. In addition, the odds are against you on actually making any money. In 2022, Chris Zukowski found that the median game on Steam earns just $1,136 in its lifetime. I could revisit this in the future if the mood takes me, and there is a precedent for this: Alien Hominid started as a Flash prototype and was later released as a commercial game on numerous platforms.
My now 7 year-old adoringly said, “Dad! I can’t believe that you’re going to be FAMOUS for making Avenger Sharks!”. I love his optimism.
There was one more requirement for Steam to publish the game. A TRAILER! I’d been rolling out various videos as an excuse to learn DaVinci Resolve for a while, so this was great fun to do and an opportunity to totally ham it up 80s style.
Watching that trailer back really makes me happy (MORE JOY) at how far the game has come.
It’s the same feeling when I look at the mass of code that makes up the game in the Godot editor. It actually does stuff!
LAUNCHED!
Avenger Sharks launched on Steam on 21st February 2024. My children jointly pressed the big green RELEASE NOW button. That was a wonderful moment.
That means you can download and play the game right now.
At the time of writing, 4,846 people have clicked to download the game. Some of those have even left positive reviews. I didn’t do this for the glory (okay, maybe a little bit…) but it is nice to have that level of feedback.
What’s next? I’m continuing to add more features to the game, and listen to my children as they come up with new ideas. More than that, I have been handed a piece of paper as an initial design document for our next game.
This means I have won the best game of all: Inspiring my children to want to create something of their own.
See also…
When children hit the age of 8, Scratch is a great programming language for them to learn to create interactive stories, games and animations. This will be the direction I steer mine in next.
My next game is possibly going to be created using the PICO-8 fantasy console. It’s a love letter to old consoles and has a thriving scene. Many, many games have been created.