The First of the Forsaken

The older I get, the more abandoned game projects I leave in my wake. During the past fifteen years I’ve started work on dozens of video games and – if you ignore this trifle – failed to finish every single one of them. Am I proud of this record? Of course not. The thought that the fruits of so much effort – so much reflection and experimentation – are now gathering dust on forgotten hard drives, cuts me to the quick every time I think about it.

My excuse for this woeful pattern of behaviour is not especially original. Like amateur coders the world over, I’ve a habit of shelving projects when Real Life gets in the way, when a thorny technical problem retards progress, or when another more interesting game idea pops into my head. Alternatively, I lose focus and/or momentum once the programming problems are behind me, and only the donkey-work – UI design, level design, testing… – remains.

Although the vast majority of my unfinished creations have been conjured up with the help of the magic wand that is GameMaker, I recently stumbled on a folder on an old HD that reminded me my game dev journey actually began in 2009 with Adventure Game Studio.

All that remains of project #1 – ‘that book game’ – is a collection of memory-stirring assets. In essence it was going to be a compendium of literary mini-games. Each level was inspired by a different novel and quite literally built from that novel. Some levels like the Tales of King Arthur one…

…and the One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich one…

….were distinctly puzzle-like.

Others such as challenges inspired by The 39 Steps…

and The Day of the Triffids…

…were arcade or tactical in character.

The jpeg remnants that decorate this post bring back emotions as well as more prosaic memories. When you’ve been living next to a spiky border fence for the best part of thirty years, how exciting – how intoxicating – it is to finally vault that fence and see, from a new perspective, a world you know well.

While I know I’ll probably never experience quite that thrill again, I’m happy to say I still get a buzz from testing a new bit of handmade code and discovering it works exactly as intended. The thought that coding – even when inexpertly done – can produce pleasure makes the fact that I’ve ‘squandered’ weeks months of my life programming games that will never be finished, or played by anyone other than myself, that bit easier to bear.