Note added on March 10, 2026: This devlog belongs to an older game project that I’m no longer continuing. I’m still building games, just not this one. The follow-up devlogs for this project were privated or removed for personal reasons.

Starting the Game Journey

I finally decided to follow one of my oldest dreams: making a game. I thought it would be easier these days with advances in AI and all the tools available for creating sprites, writing code, and planning stories. It seemed like everything was ready for me.

But wow, I didn’t imagine it would be this tough.

This devlog marks the beginning of that journey. It’s not just about the game itself, but about everything that led me here: how it started, what I’ve learned so far, and what I’m still figuring out.

Let’s dive in.

How It All Began

As some of you know, I’m a software developer now, but that wasn’t always the plan.

I learned coding because I wanted to make a game. That was the real goal from the beginning. I’ve shared this story before in a post called "How I Became a Developer," but the short version is simple: I didn’t set out to become a web developer. I wanted to build a game.

Back then, I tried learning things like C# and Unity. But life took me in a different direction. I moved into web development, then branched into broader software work. It was practical, and honestly, I began to enjoy it.

But then something unexpected happened.

I stumbled across my old notes. Really old notes, the kind I scribbled down when I was around 12 or 13. Looking at them now feels a little embarrassing, but also kind of amazing. That younger version of me had big dreams, and one of those dreams was this game.

And I thought: why not try to make it now?

It could be a fun project, a strong portfolio piece, and, more importantly, a way to do something for the kid in me who believed anything was possible.

First Challenges

When I started this project, I was sure things would be easier because AI is everywhere now. It’s in coding, art, and design, so I assumed I could just give it a few prompts and let it handle the difficult parts.

That assumption was wrong.

The first major decision was whether to use a game engine or build everything myself.

Eager to take on a challenge, I initially chose to build it without a game engine. I thought, "Let’s use Rust. It’s clean, fast, and hardcore."

That turned out to be a big mistake.

After writing around 8,000 lines of code, it became obvious how wrong that choice was. There was no physics engine, no rendering shortcuts, just me wrestling with Rust.

So I changed direction. I decided to use a game engine and chose Godot. It was difficult at first, but the community and the number of available guides made it much easier than building everything from scratch.

Challenges with Sprites

Next came the sprite problem.

I thought AI could handle that too. I asked it to generate character sprite sheets. That sounded simple enough.

It wasn’t.

Every attempt came out messy. Nothing aligned correctly, and the sheets didn’t animate the way they were supposed to. I tried multiple tools and kept getting the same disappointing result.

Eventually, I had to do the thing I wanted to avoid: learn pixel art.

That was hard for me. I’m not naturally good at drawing, especially tiny pixel characters. But I found a middle path. I used AI to create character concepts, then I pixelated them myself frame by frame.

Progress was slow, and I’m still not an expert, but the game finally started to feel like my own creation instead of a collection of tools I barely understood.

Completing the first character took nearly two weeks of daily effort. I spent hours trying to make the walking animation feel natural. It was frustrating, but when I finally saw the character move inside a world I had made, the feeling was incredible.

Building a World

After dealing with character sprites, I went deeper into pixel art. I even thought about making my own font.

The font has a blocky, pixel-like style inspired by Minecraft, a game that means a lot to me. If I was building my own world, it felt right to design the text too. It’s not perfect, but it’s mine, and that gives it a kind of honesty I really like.

Once the character sprites looked decent after a lot of trial and error, I moved on to the terrain.

Looking back through my old notes, I remembered the game modes I had imagined:

• A story mode with a set path, storytelling, and challenges.
• An explorer mode that lets players roam freely.
• A third mode I had completely forgotten: a procedurally generated world, something closer to a solo Minecraft survival experience.

That last idea hit me the hardest. It’s the one I want to explore first: a vast world you can wander through without any specific goal, just for discovery, atmosphere, and the feeling of being somewhere old and mysterious.

For world design, I’ve been experimenting with different landscapes and environmental storytelling. I want players to discover ruins or strange monuments and wonder about their history. Small mysteries. Things that don’t need long explanations, but still make the world feel ancient and alive.

Building the Lore

At first, I wanted to jump straight into explorer mode, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. So I started with story mode, which meant building the lore first.

With AI helping me brainstorm, I ended up writing an incredible amount of lore in just a week, more than 250 pages. I developed story arcs, factions, world history, mechanics, and major characters.

For the first time, I could really see the world taking shape.

I created three main factions, each with its own philosophy, visual identity, and internal conflicts. The world itself has a strange technological evolution, a mix of advanced systems and simpler tools, each justified by the lore.

I even created a basic language for the oldest civilization in the game, with symbols that players could find etched into ruins.

Current Progress

Right now, the story mode is fully written on paper. I’ve already started putting it into the game, and around four missions are built so far. There’s still a lot left to do: more missions, more items, and a lot more systems integration. But the foundation is there, and it’s playable.

As for explorer mode, I haven’t started working on Naut and Todd yet. They belong to that side of the game rather than the main story. I’ll get to them later, once the story mode feels more complete. They’re supposed to guide players in different ways and shape how exploration feels.

The first creatures in the game were inspired by Minecraft. It’s my little tribute to the game that started all of this for me.

The lore is layered, but I’m trying to keep it approachable. I want the world to feel deep without becoming exhausting.

I’ve also built a journal system where players can uncover the story at their own pace. There are no forced cutscenes or long mandatory conversations. Instead, players can find artifacts, talk to certain characters, and piece things together if they want to.

Unexpected Challenges

You can play the story mode right now, but it’s not running smoothly. The main systems are there, but they still need a lot of work. There are bugs, visual issues, and performance problems. Those things can be fixed.

The hardest part so far hasn’t been coding, level design, or mechanics.

It’s making characters move.

That has taken more time than anything else.

Just making one character sprite sheet can take six hours or more.

And that doesn’t even include bosses, who need their own attacks, movement patterns, drops, and effects.

It’s incredibly time-consuming. Honestly, it’s been one of the hardest parts of the entire project.

I’ve already made a few NPCs, and some of the basic systems are in place. But the amount of art required, even for a pixel game, is much bigger than I expected.

Then there are things like bikes. Yes, bikes are in the game. You’ll understand why later. But animating a character riding a bike in pixel art was nearly too much. All those moving parts, the pedaling, the shifting angles across different terrain, it has been extremely difficult.

Learning Everything from Scratch

This project has been huge.

I’ve put in much more time than I expected.

I had to learn GDScript from scratch. I wanted to use Rust at first, and honestly I still do, but setting up Rust inside Godot felt too difficult for now. So I used GDScript because it’s simpler and easier to iterate with.

Then there was pixel art.

Then animation.

Then character design.

Then font design.

I never expected to learn all of these things, but here I am.

I’ve watched countless tutorials, joined Discord groups for pixel artists, and even started keeping a small notebook for sketching ideas before trying them on the computer. The learning curve has been steep, but I’ve improved a lot since the beginning. My first sprite looks terrible compared to what I can do now.

The Sound Frontier

But the one thing I’ve been avoiding?

The one thing still not done?

Sound.

There isn’t a single sound in the game right now. No footsteps, no ambient noise, no UI feedback. Nothing.

And I hate that.

Sound in games has always felt difficult to me. I don’t fully know why. It just never clicked. Importing, converting, syncing sounds to actions, balancing volume, all of it feels like a huge hassle.

I tried using AI to generate music, hoping for something nostalgic with that Minecraft-style piano feeling.

I experimented with a few tools, but it didn’t work. It felt robotic. No soul.

So once again, I’m at the point where I need to either:

• Learn music creation myself.
• Find the right tool or person to work with.
• Or use free sound assets and figure out how to make them fit the game.

Whatever I end up doing, one thing is clear: sound is the next big challenge.