Very cool. What tooling do you use/recommend for the "small game over the weekend" scope? I keep running into either the oversized industrial end that requires serious investment to even get out of the gate, or the very lightweight offerings where you have to reinvent everything from scratch.
Not OP, but IMO, Godot. Extremely easy to import assets of any type and prototype a game. The only thing that I would consider a barrier is(if you don't already know how) setting up the initial tilemap and spritesheet. But either using Godot's documentation(which can be found inside of the editor) or through a YouTube tutorial I feel like compared to Unity/UE5 its much better for building quick prototypes.
Plus you can basically put it together in a variety of languages:
It has support for spritesheets of course, but also Tiled map files (https://www.mapeditor.org/) which I use to build level maps.
If I'm building a game that can be implemented via the DOM (like if I don't need an update() loop), I love getting away with just using React or Elm. For example, any sort of grid-based game or board game.
I don't use Godot for browser games because (1) its browser support got worse from v3 -> 4, (2) I just want to write Typescript, and (3) it's just bigger and more complicated. Of course, the best game engine is simply the one that compels you to actually build and hopefully finish games.
Btw, give Pico-8 a shot. In a few months I'd built more games in Pico-8 than I finished across the rest of my life since the scope is so tiny.
I have uploaded several games to itch (although it's been a while) and a cool thing I found was that even with no followers back when I started making things, a decent number of people played some of my games! Nothing crazy, but I remember being delighted that the second game i ever made[1] got a few thousand plays and some actual comments.
My experience is that:
* tags matter! For example, a decent number of people seem to be looking for new incremental games and are willing to try new stuff in that category
* your primary image, title, and description matter a lot and it's worth spending some time taking a good screenshot (I'm really bad at this)
* you can upload a gif instead of just a screenshot to include a little gameplay in your title image and that might help
* participating in gamejams can help a lot because you get some guaranteed players (everyone plays each others games and rates them; maybe you get some feedback too)
I'm not sure where you are in your gamedev journey (there's a good chance you're way ahead of me and this advice is useless!) but "just make some stuff and put it on there and see who bites" was effective and motivating for me early on
Amazing that he's still going after all these years.
Please support him if you use his assets in your game prototypes!... Because by the time you ship a finished game, it will be too late, you'll be completely broke.
Thanks for the good advice. I’m not a game developer but I bought the big sprites pack because he’s been working on it for a lot of years and deserve some compensation.
I bought that pack like 5 or 6 years anymore, I dont even remember. Insane value, even tho all assets are CC0 license, but the amount of work he puts in just made me like to support it. I still sometimes get emails about updates on the pack. One of the rare cases where I feel like did not pay enough for the amount of value.
I am not even a professional game dev, just dabble in it in my free time. But having so many cohesive art assets at your disposal makes it a lot of un.
Kenney.nl is the hero of the Game Development Programming course I taught at university. Access to high quality free assets allowed my students to not worry about being a great artist and focus on the game programming and game development mechanics that I was trying to teach.
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When I feel like making a small game over the weekend, I can scroll the spritesheets and get ideas just from looking at them. They're so good.
And it's a lot more motivating to work on a game when it looks so good from the start instead of using crappy prototype art I built myself.
Plus you can basically put it together in a variety of languages:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/i...
No I'm not affiliated with Godot in any capacity. I've just had a much better experience using it vs the other previously mentioned editors.
There's also lua love and pygame for quick 2D game projects
It has support for spritesheets of course, but also Tiled map files (https://www.mapeditor.org/) which I use to build level maps.
If I'm building a game that can be implemented via the DOM (like if I don't need an update() loop), I love getting away with just using React or Elm. For example, any sort of grid-based game or board game.
I don't use Godot for browser games because (1) its browser support got worse from v3 -> 4, (2) I just want to write Typescript, and (3) it's just bigger and more complicated. Of course, the best game engine is simply the one that compels you to actually build and hopefully finish games.
Btw, give Pico-8 a shot. In a few months I'd built more games in Pico-8 than I finished across the rest of my life since the scope is so tiny.
Monogame / C# is also pretty easy, but it's definitely more in the lightweight camp.
I have uploaded several games to itch (although it's been a while) and a cool thing I found was that even with no followers back when I started making things, a decent number of people played some of my games! Nothing crazy, but I remember being delighted that the second game i ever made[1] got a few thousand plays and some actual comments.
My experience is that:
I'm not sure where you are in your gamedev journey (there's a good chance you're way ahead of me and this advice is useless!) but "just make some stuff and put it on there and see who bites" was effective and motivating for me early on[1] https://itseieio.itch.io/sisyphus-needs-a-nap
OpenGameArt.org (OGA) has a lot of libre/free assets (Kenney often posts on OGA):
https://opengameart.org/
Itch.io also has many CC0 and CC-BY licensed assets:
https://itch.io/game-assets/assets-cc0
https://itch.io/game-assets/assets-cc4-by
It looks like there's even a site dedicated to Asset Jesus [1].
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ThemeParkitect/comments/o63nbi/who_...
[1] https://www.assetjesus.com/
https://itch.io/jam/kenney-jam-2019
Please support him if you use his assets in your game prototypes!... Because by the time you ship a finished game, it will be too late, you'll be completely broke.
Similar business model and usefulness. A lot of free and you can purchase via itch.
I've used both to prototype many games in Unreal and have bought all their assets.
I am not even a professional game dev, just dabble in it in my free time. But having so many cohesive art assets at your disposal makes it a lot of un.
https://twitter.com/KenneyNL/status/1362768014895157249
Took me a bit to find it, so for anyone curious:
"All game assets found on the asset page are public domain CC0 licensed..."
There is a small FAQ if you click Support at the page bottom.