I had lofty ideas this winter of starting work on a simple game consisting of mazes the character had to work through. It was going to simultaneously be a demo of my abilities and a method for me to accrue and hone them.

I haven’t ever completed a game before other than simple Qbasic games in DOS. I used to make overhead shooters and side-scrolling platformers and weird graphics demos.

Well the plan this time was thwarted by a lack of focus, several other personal projects and a complete lack of an… actual plan.

Victoria helped me here by getting me to do a few things:

1. All of the things!

I created a list of all of the steps I could imagine needing to do to complete this simple game. My first list went way off the rails, falling victim to my mind’s desire to categorize everything.

After showing Victoria and her visibly expressing displeasure and disappointment at not getting the point across, she helped me write out the second list. A simple line-by-line list of items. A simple to-do list.

2. Need vs. Want

Then the next step, she informed me, was to split them into tasks that 100% require to be done and tasks that are nice to have completed.

This created a list weighted toward practical, 100% required items but with almost as many nice-to-haves.

With a list of attainable goals (I hope) I am now prepared to take on the challenge. I am ready! Here I come, game development!