My first contact with…

This week I had my first contact with some kind of game development.

At first I was afraid I couldn't come up with an idea good enough for the challenge, but as the days went by and I started to get some help from the Apple Developer Academy mentors I got more than confident that I could finish my project.

I learned a lot of Swift Playgrounds, the Swift language, SpriteKit Physics and how to get the most out of Figma during the challenge, that way I could tell the story I wanted with a fun and interactive game. I also learned 2 very important things: it is more productive and insightful to ask for help once in a while and not to try to learn everything by myself; wrapping an idea in a restricted scope gives you more focus to work on the core features of your project, leaving all the not so useful stuff for later on.

Two things I noticed: Swift is a very different language when compared to JavaScript (which I used to work with) but I found it a lot intuitive and simple, and SpriteKit is a library that surprised me a lot with all the possibilities it brings to you so you can give life to your project.

Although I learned a lot about Figma and vectors, something I wanted to give more attention and couldn't was the visual identity of the project. I was not 100% satisfied with the design and look of the game but it was not the main objective, so I want to work harder in this department in the future projects. I also want to give more attention to details like sound effects and the soundtrack of my future games.

In short, developing a game for the first time was a very fun experience and seeing the final result was a lot satisfying, I felt that the mission had been accomplished. It taught me that I have a lot of room for improvement, but doing it step by step and working smarter and harder everyday everything is achievable.