First I want to start out by saying that this is my first post, but I'm excited about this community and plan on staying and contributing :)

I have a decent ammount of background in 3D game development. I've worked with Cryengine and Unity quite a bit, and consider myself at least knowledgeable in them. However I've recently realized that I have a hard time getting inspired when making 3D games. Everything I make is either a mediocre COD clone, or a Slender clone. But I've realized that the best ideas I ever come up with are for 2D games (sidescrollers mainly).

So my question to you is how should I start in learning to develop 2D games? I have absolutely no knowledge at all in developing them, but I am willing to learn from the beginning (coding from scratch or using an engine). I would rather not use Unity which seems to be suggested by many people as this is not the art style I'm going for. I'm aiming to make games more in a pixel-art style like Home (find it on Steam).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)

Thanks,

-Creator

Well I haven't been this for very long, but I'm currently making 2D games in C++ using OpenGL as the graphics server. OpenGL is fairly easy to use and cross-platform, and there are loads of tutorials out there to help wrap your head around how it works and libraries to download if you need them.

The OpenGL library I'm currently using can be found here. But whether you'd want to use that or not would also depend on what language you'd prefer to code in.

Hope that was some help.

Well I haven't been this for very long, but I'm currently making 2D games in C++ using OpenGL as the graphics server. OpenGL is fairly easy to use and cross-platform, and there are loads of tutorials out there to help wrap your head around how it works and libraries to download if you need them.

The OpenGL library I'm currently using can be found here. But whether you'd want to use that or not would also depend on what language you'd prefer to code in.

Hope that was some help.

It definitely was, thank you :)

Are there any particular tutorials that helped you the most? I know I can find a million but I wanted to know if you know of some good ones. I know the very basics of C++, but not much more.

It depends what you want to do in development (Graphics, Programming, etc..)

But if you are going for programming, and you want to learn how everything works, then use OpenGL/DX. But if you want to program a Gameplay/AI/ etc.. then use some libraries for example SFML. And of course it also depends in what language you want to program.

I can't wholeheartedly recommend any tutorials unfortunately, since I mostly used notes written by my Uni lecturer, and only checked out some tutorials when a topic wasn't covered (enough), or I was having problems. Swiftless.com seems to have some very detailed and useful tutorials though, found here.

Glad I helped.

Have fun making all the games :)

PS There are also quite a few useful tutorials/resources here on gamedev that you could check out.

If you're only concerned about C++ Windows development, I would highly suggest trying HGE. It's very easy to use, powerful and comes with excellent documentation, despite not having been updated in some time. It includes nearly everything you need to make a game like the one you linked to (I think the only thing it may not do is networking, which you can do with RakNet yourself if you want).

We have a nice article floating around: http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/the-guide-to-implementing-2d-platformers-r2936