Ideas to Reality: A Journey into Video Game Development

Game development has played a key role most of my life: my mom and dad developed video games for a living, and our family nights consisted of playing video games together. For me, making games was an organic development—it was part of my life. As a coder and designer, game development allowed me to make an entertaining product in an environment with both freedom and structure, ultimately reflecting the dedication and rigor needed to develop good habits in school and in life.

Coding games wasn’t a technique that I magically acquired overnight—it took me years to get to where I currently am. Like everybody, I started off knowing absolutely nothing about how to code games—slow and steady paved my way to understanding and competence. I usually try to code in my free time, and when I come up with an interesting idea, my first thought is to program that idea into reality. It’s how I channel my creativity: by creating an entertaining product that captures my personal vision.

Before I could bring my ideas to life through code, I made games that relied on pencil and paper. While they sparked creativity, they never truly satisfied me. I felt limited, knowing that so many of my ideas couldn’t fully take shape on a simple sheet of paper. I craved for a better way to make games until the age of seven when my mom introduced me to coding. That moment opened my eyes to a completely new world, and from then on, my journey in game development truly began.

Learning to code was not easy. My dad guided me along the way, but most of my understanding stemmed from practice through online guides. The process was tedious, with most tutorials leading me through banal exercises like bouncing a dull black ball around a monotone background. None of it felt like game development, and it seemed as though I was making no progress in learning. But like mastering any other skill, I wasn’t going to perfect it in a day, week, or even a month. Progress takes time, effort, and patience, and with my mother’s encouragement and my desire to make games, I kept pushing. Every step along the way made me feel closer and closer to mastering programming.

The first real game I made was simple. It was a puzzle game that required the player to move obstacles to pave the path towards the finish line. The small catch was that all obstacles moved together. It wasn't that complex, but it would’ve been ridiculous to assume that my first product would be perfect. Just like in school, a new subject won’t be mastered in a single day. Every lesson is just a step forward, and enough steps can reach places impossible to seize in one lunge. I envisioned my projects exactly like that: each of my creations was a stepping stone, and my first puzzle game was just one massive leap in a series of tiny steps.

From there, my progress grew tenfold. I crafted a new game that rolled barrels and hurled spears across the screen while also dropping asteroids, all for the player to dodge and survive. Then I made another: a fighting game that forced players to clash with two little cubes that ran around swinging swords and staffs, casting magic and chasing each other across the playing field. With each project and each attempt, I relied more and more on myself and less and less on other’s help. This self reliance furthered my coding capabilities—I became more independent and sought out knowledge on my own, even beyond coding. I began to seek answers to various questions myself instead of waiting for others to simply hand them to me, which led me to take on my biggest creation yet: Dragon Adventure.

Dragon Adventure is a culmination of everything I have learned thus far—it captures the essence of an adrenaline pumping game. Dragon Adventure is a ruthless, “bullet hell” style beat 'em up where the player utilizes dozens of unique attacks to exploit enemy weaknesses across a plethora of levels. It’s my largest creation to date, being a project I’ve been building for multiple years. Other than a handful of borrowed art and minor assistance, I was responsible for the game design, code, levels, and story. I believe it’s my best work as of yet, and it stands as proof of how far I’ve come: the embodiment of all the stepping stones through my journey.

Today, I continue to enjoy working on Dragon Adventure, alongside a multitude of smaller projects while I prepare for college. While Dragon Adventure is my most ambitious work to date, I’m still far from mastering game development—I’ve barely scratched the surface. While there’s still plenty to improve upon, each project poses new opportunities to grow and exercise my creativity. Through the countless hours I spent coding, I’ve developed a sense of perseverance that has served me well. Developing games has become the embodiment of my persistence and determination, one that I’ll keep refining with every new creation.