We’re going to build 12 games in 12 months

Inspired by Pieter Levels 12 months 12 startups challenge (https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/), I have decided to do my own challenge. But instead of 12 startups, I’m going to build 12 mobile games in 12 months.

Which games to build?

Some of the games will be easy to build and require less time than a month, and some of the games will require more time. So it’s not necessary 1 game per month!

It’s not that hard to make mobile games, the hard part here is to get noticed. Over 1000 games and apps are released on the App Store every day, so how are people going to find my games?

Build in public

I’m going to build a little bit in public, showing bits and pieces of the games I build while they are in development. I’m hoping that if I’m open about the development, struggles, victories and similar by blogging, forums and similar, maybe I can get some followers who are interested in what I write and in downloading the games I’m building. I’m building the games together with my partner, but I’m doing the blogging here.

I’m going to start with a really simple game, and then it’s going to progress from this. I have already been thinking about the final game for a while, and I really hope that this game will be a hit.

Game engine

I started a while ago thinking about which game engine to choose. Should I use SpriteKit, Cocos2D-X, Unity, Corona SDK, Marmelade, Love, Defold… The list goes on and on, and it’s really hard to manoeuvre in the jungle of game engines. Every one of them has their pros and cons, but I landed on building the games using Corona SDK.

I have some experience with Corona from earlier but never released anything built using this game engine. Last time I released a game, I used Cocos2D (Objective C), but this doesn’t seem to be well maintained anymore. One of the biggest pros for Corona is the multi-platform support. I can support both iOS and Android with basically the same code base.

Rapid game development is very important when I’m building. When things take to much time, I lose the excitement I had and start with something new. I’m hoping this 12 months 12 games challenge will help me finish projects I’m starting.

Graphics

I’m not a very good graphics designer, so luckily I’ll get help to this from my partner Camilla. This will not only make the development quicker, but the games will look so much better.

Stats

I know stats are something many find interesting in challenges like this. So every month I’m going to share the number of downloads, revenue and similar.

I will also try to experience a little bit with running ads for my new games inside the already existing games, and see how that goes. I’ll try to write about this too as it might be helpful for other aspiring game developers.

The first game

I started a little bit over week ago with this project and the first game is nearly done. I’m just going to do a few more tweaks and testing, and it will be ready for publishing on App Store and Google Play.

The game is called SquareSpinner. I will not write more about the game in this post, but I will write more about it in a separate post. I would love for everyone to downloadit and give me an honest feedback. I know it’s not very impressive, but at least I finished it and released it!

I don’t expect to get many downloads for the first game, and the goal for the first month is 50 downloads.

Follow the journey

By building as many as 12 games, not only will my programming and designs skills become better (hopefully), but maybe I get some fans that will download all my games.

I hope that this sounds exciting. If you’re interested in following my journey, you can keep your self up to date by either liking me on Facebook, signing up to my newsletter or follow me here on Medium.

What do you think?