I'm Making a Video Game!

I can't hold it in anymore, I have to tell you about it!

This morning I woke up and my first thought was (I swear I’m not making this up), Finally, it’s a new day!

I looked over at the clock and saw that I had woken up earlier than usual and thought, YES! More time to do stuff!

It’s January and I live in Norway. It’s cold, it’s dark, and we have snow up to my thighs. The news is full of disasters and it feels like the whole world is falling apart. There’s also a dead mouse in the wall next to my studio. It stinks like hell and there’s nothing I can do about it.

So how on Earth can I be so excited for a new day?

Programming.

I’ve started learning programming. But not just any programming, I’ve finally, finally started making my first video game. And yes, of course it’s about microbes!

How did this happen?

First, a little background. This whole thing might feel like it’s coming out of nowhere, but it’s actually been brewing for many years now.

I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. It’s the only thing I’ve never lost interest in for any amount of time, no matter what else was happening in my life. I even stopped drawing for several years while I was in college and university, but I’ve never stopped gaming. I actually met my husband in a game! It was Ryzom, if you’re curious.

I guess games have been my way of coping with the chaos and confusion of life. Game worlds make sense. Even if it’s a silly kind of sense, they always maintain some kind of structure. Unlike the real world where people almost never say what they mean, most aspects of modern life go against all of our natural instincts, and the people in charge don’t seem to care that the life support system on our spaceship is breaking down.

Games offer an escape into a world of predictable cause and effect, challenges that have solutions, and fixed, clear rules.

At some point I started thinking more about how games are designed. I can talk about it endlessly. Tux (my husband) and I love breaking down the mechanics of the games we play and digging into why we like them or how they could be improved. He’s a software architect and has also tinkered with making his own games over the years.

Last year, Tux began serious progress on a massive game project he’s been working toward for nearly a decade now, if not longer. You can check it out and follow the weekly development updates here if you’re interested.

When we took some time off for Christmas, Tux spent most of it focused on that project, while I spent it playing Ark: Survival Ascended, sleeping in late and generally decomposing.

Just as the break was ending, I emerged feeling fully composted and ready to create new things again. I felt a strong sense of a window opening, so I asked Tux if I could experiment with placing objects into the world in his game. He helped me install the Unity game engine and showed me how to install his project on my computer. I played around with this for a while, and for some reason Unity felt less intimidating than it did in the past.

I remembered seeing an artist on YouTube who was making her own 2D game. She wasn’t a programmer, she was just like me, an artist who had an idea for a game, and wanted to see if she could do it by herself. Her game was basically just a bunch of drawings that she had made, moving around on the screen and interacting with each other. When you think about it, that’s really what all games boil down to.

I’d been dreaming of making a 3D game or immersive experience, but maybe this was actually a better place to start.

So I decided to try one very simple thing, just to see if I could do it. Make a little protozoa character move around the screen and eat bacteria.

Unity isn’t as scary as I thought!

Imagine my surprise when it actually worked!

Then, I thought it would be cool if the cell would divide after eating enough bacteria…

And just like that, I had built a very simple game. I can’t begin to describe the feeling of euphoria I had watching this little world come to life on my screen.

What’s really blowing my mind is that this process of making games feels exactly like gaming, in the sense that you’re working in a world with fixed rules and structure. The tasks are clear and concrete, and can always be broken down into manageable steps. Every time I run into a problem (which is CONSTANTLY), I feel confident that the solution exists, and I just need to find it. And eventually, I do. It’s incredibly empowering.

So this is what has me jumping out of bed on a gloomy Tuesday morning in January, excited for a new day. Just two weeks ago you could not have convinced me that programming of all things could have me feeling this driven, but here we are.

I can’t wait to share more about this project as it develops. For now I just wanted to let you know that it’s happening, because I’m so incredibly excited and couldn’t hold it in anymore.

In the next update, which will be very soon, I’ll tell you all about the game and my plans for it, but right now I really want to go back to work on adjusting the roaming behaviour of my flagellate NPCs. Then it’s time to make the first predator!

I sincerely wish you all the very best, and I hope you have (or soon find) something in your life that gets you this fired up even in the middle of winter while the world is falling apart 🔥

Warm hugs,

Kate

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