“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad” - Shigeru Miyamoto
So against the spirit of that quote, I published my first rushed game on Roblox: a randomized obby.
To give a bit of background, I’ve been on and off Roblox development for a couple of years, but have never released anything. I’ve also started talking more about game development, with the goal of helping people build better games. However, not having anything to show for it doesn’t help my credibility, does it?
So I decided on challenging myself - every month, I will be developing a game from scratch, by myself. How did that turn out?
Without further ado, I’ll go over what I did, week by week.
What’s the Purpose of This Post?
Simply put, I want to have this post for myself (looking back later to see how far I’ve progressed), as well as document my journey for others to see. Hopefully some of you will find it encouraging that there are others who are also starting on game development. Critique and advice is also welcome, whether it’s related to the game project or my overall workflow. 
Week 1-2: Error 404, Work not Found
Simply put, I wasted the first two weeks. While I did draft out an initial game idea and did some minor work, I didn’t do much in the way of actually building the core gameplay loop. At the end of 2 weeks, I had a very, very small portion of the game actually done.
Week 3: Crunch time, Part 1
Week 3 was when I started to realize that mid-development hell was real, and that the game, at the scale that I wanted it, was not going to happen. School picked back up, and balancing multiple things wasn’t the easiest of things. I worked on the core gameplay, and got quite a bit done, but the project was nowhere near what I wanted it to be like.
Week 4: OH NO
Week 4 was probably the most productive week. I had a bit of time every day to finish as much as possible, but I knew that certain things would have to be cut from the game. Tonight marks the release of my game (midnight PST), whether it was unfinished or not.
So what’s the final product? A mediocre randomized obby game.
What did I learn from this month’s development cycle?
- Minimum viable product is first priority. Focus on details later.
I had too many things that I wanted to add as “fluff”, and spent a lot of time worrying about that when the game I had in mind wasn’t even functional yet.
Topics That I Explored
- Datastores (I still need more work on this, as it’s pretty much a “must have” in every game on Roblox. I still struggle with simple saving and getting, so this is a high priority target)
- Looping/Iteration (While I’ve done my fair share of for and while loops in the past, iterating through tables and arrays are still a foreign concept to me)
Questions for the developer community
February has begun, and I’m planning on starting anew with the lessons above in mind. Do you think I should continue working and updating this project? It would be nice to see it expanded upon (I still believe that the foundation is great).
As stated above, any and all critique/advice is welcome. Thanks for taking the time to read this!
