A bucket list Game

This is a game launch but also about the whole process and inspiration 

Where do I start?

This game was something I had to do on my bucket list, as the title says. I wanted all my life to create a game and release it publicly, and now I finally have. Ever since the great Commodore 64 back in the 80s, I always pondered the thought of putting something out there, but I struggled as a kid to learn programming.

I had another game in the year 2000. I created a few levels in it but didn't back it up, and my laptop was stolen. :( The game was created using Games Factory by Click Team, an exciting time. :) The game was basically about walking past a witch's house, and she'd fly out on a broomstick and chase you. The goal was to outrun her and not get caught. The plan was to make her fly faster each level. It was a simple game and fun; maybe one day I will revisit the goal and bring it back.

I finally got here in 2024 after pursuing some other goals with a friend and rediscovering my love for coding. I wouldn't say I'm good at it, but I'm still learning heaps. I had lots of help along the way with this one, especially from AI, which gave the game a huge kickstart. Not being a graphics designer (funny that, I'm another artist with paintings), I also had help with some images. They were never perfect, so I had to edit them with Photoshop.

There's a funny thing about using AI with coding—it's never perfect. In most cases, it will screw your code up. This is where my basic understanding kicked in, and I had to manually stitch or code it myself (in Python). Could it have been me being a poor person not affording premium AI subscriptions? I will never know.

Anyway, back to the game I've released. The idea was inspired by regularly attending a local show called the Perth Royal Show. If you don't know what that is, think of it as a local carnival or fair but a large yearly event in my city. They used to have fortune-telling machines where you'd give it $2 to have your fortune read. I remember the excitement and laughs these brought me with family or friends, although you couldn't hear talking half the time because of other noise. So I thought this concept would make a simple starting point for a game. Well, to be honest, I was wrong. The logic and advanced stuff in this game was huge. When you play it, it might look very simple, but I had so many issues that I rewrote the game a few times to get it right, taking just under six months in total. The issues were things like full-screen mode causing inconsistent alignments on different screen resolutions. As an amateur with coding, this was beyond me, so after more learning I settled for a set smaller resolution that would stay constant and centered. A few times, I almost gave up. I even started redoing this game using GDevelop 5, only to find that the option for random text was removed in the newest version. Frustrated, I stuck with Python because, although the other way may have looked simpler, I didn't have the answers I needed at the time to achieve my goals.

Don't get me started about package installers—they all suck. With AI, I had to code my own, which was much simpler than what's out there.

I would love to know what people think about the game. Do they like it? I know it's a game you'd load as a party trick, but even that is okay. Should I add more to it if I create a later release?.

one bucket list ticked off, yayyy! :D