Gonna be honest, I didn’t see this coming just a few months ago. Through some connections I recently had a freelance game development opportunity come up. I like an excuse to start a new project (while trying to ignore the ever growing number of unfinished ones). Game development has always interested me for a long time, so I figured this was too good to pass up.

And just this last week we submitted our first game to the client! I learned a lot along the way and it was a blast.

Thankfully I’m not brand new to game development

Like I said, I’ve always been into game development and have done a bunch of random stuff related to it over the years. Mapping, modding, messing with fantasy consoles, and I’ve even helped out a little bit on an unreleased Unreal Engine game. But this last project feels like a milestone because it was my first time doing anything professional in the space.

My brother and I teamed up which was perfect. He’s way more experienced than I with 3D asset production, and I was able to bring some programming experience.

Godot is an awesome tool

The game we just finished was my first time doing anything serious with the Godot game engine. I have to say I’m a fan now. Granted, this game was really small in scope but I think that’s part of why Godot was such a good fit for us. Its documentation is excellent and in general it’s really quite approachable and easy to learn. It’s just a joy to work with. Certainly much more so than Unity or Unreal.

We used Godot’s scripting language, GDScript, out of necessity because of our target platform. But even if we’d had the choice available I think GDScript would’ve still been the best option for us. Syntactically it seems to draw most of its inspiration from Python, which made it pretty easy to dive into. Overall, I haven’t had many complaints with GDScript’s feature set. I am curious now how developing in C# with Godot would feel, though I definitely haven’t felt the need to yet.

I could really see myself making a personal project in Godot at some point, especially now that I’m familiar with it.

Keep in mind that my experience with Godot is still a bit limited and really tilted towards the programming side of things. But if you’re looking to start a new game project, I’d say it’s worth your time no matter your skill level. I’d love to hear about your experience with Godot if you’ve used it before, good or bad.

Doing something I enjoy

The last thing I’ll say here is that it’s been a really nice change of pace getting paid to do something I enjoy. Even though this project has been coming out of my free time, it’s felt exciting just like any other of my side projects. Never overwhelming or tiring.

I’m definitely looking forward to doing more game dev stuff in the future now that I’ve gotten a real taste of it.

— JP