I'm planning to build 100 tiny games, (the specific number is not so important).
The general idea is to improve my skills, by pushing my comfort zones in game development.
I'm looking for a breakdown list of 100 tiny game concepts.
These are genre's, but then also pushing different concepts, like AI, physics, graphics, animation, etc...
Any thoughts on this. Or if there is another post or article you can point me to.
- Thanks!
Its hard to take you seriously, when you say 100 games (or even 50 games, given your implied flexibility), as you're more likely to be repeating the same code over and over instead of actually learning anything through fleshing out a bigger project (and by bigger, I mean "still fairly small" since you want to "scope small", as they say). Keep in mind that, unless you have a sizable team to work with, even your smaller games are going to require months of work if you want to build anything that is worth playing. Even simple mobile apps for iPhone take 18 weeks on average, according to google. And that probably assumes some team-based effort.
Also, let's be realistic. What would even be the purpose of making that many games? You would see greatly diminished returns on your learning long before you're done with even your 10th game. Focus on 1 game at a time, and visit the various concepts you want to learn through each subsequent projects. (Good) games are extremely iterative in their design, which means that you don't need to know a lot of the stuff on day 1. Things will come to you in due time and as you're gradually becoming better and coupling your development with constant study and learning.
Just start making your first game, and iterate on it. And what do you even mean by 100 game concepts/genres? Just play a lot of games and you'll learn which genres and concepts exists. Always start with some core game functionality that is going to be the meat of the experience, then expand upon that relative to the size that you're aiming for. Then make your next game when you're ready. Iteration is the key, not planning 25-50 years worth of gaming.
I've played well over 700 games in my life (which are necessarily across most, if not all, genres and conventional settings). There's really not that many of them. Successful games tend to converge on a small subset of genres compared to the total number of genres that could potentially (an unsuccessfully) exist.
@JaminGrey - Thanks, This is really useful, Second comment on it lead to http://www.squidi.net/three/, which has around different game mechanics.
@Madolite, Thanks for your feed back, but I have a lot of what I believe are good reasons. First off, I have developed a lot of game concepts, especially large scale games that never saw the light of day. My professional title is VR Solutions Architect, and I'm a Microsoft MVP for my work in 3D. (mostly business focused and educational) I bring this up to emphasize that my issue is not ability to code, or work with the technologies.
The specific issue I'm trying to get through is faster completion of PoC's, and to have experience in a larger variety of game mechanics. Not just theoretically, but functionally. I'm trying to expand my abilities to be comfortable in game jams. Also, much of my professional work requires pulling together a game concept for business purposes very quickly.
Also, I want to be able to get through Game Jams easier, and have trouble minimizing my goals into more manageable tasks. I want a lot of different code bases, So I don't get stuck in just a couple that keep growing, but instead focus only on the absolute minimum to get a concept or mechanic done.
You are absolutely correct that I will end up having a lot of pieces repeated. But hopefully in different ways and approaches. Things I can try to shorten down a lot. May also make good blog posts.
You might consider looking at very old consoles, like say the Atari 2600, and look at the games that were most popular on it. I bet you can come up with a good list of at least 10 or 20 simple game ideas to implement that way.
I rather liked the Experimental Gameplay Project site. I imagine the explanation on the about page is something like what you're figuring, " The project started in Spring 2005 with the goal of discovering and rapidly prototyping as many new forms of gameplay as possible."
http://experimentalgameplay.com/
http://experimentalgameplay.com/blog/about/
Also, if you're looking to get more comfortable with game jams why not take a stab at past jam themes that were originally intended for fast turn around time?
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludumdare/
I would expect that there's random theme generators out there as well, although personally I would rather have other projects to do self comparison with.
