PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hello, I am Vhalenn, a French game developer working as a Technical artist by day and solo dev in my free time for seven years now!
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TELL US ABOUT MINDVENTURE.
TELL US ABOUT MINDVENTURE.
MindVenture is a creation game with a story and missions. You play a group of adventurers using their creativity to help the world recover from catastrophes. The entirety of the levels of the game are made using the game level-editor and it is fully available for players to create their own missions and add them to the world-map.
- I had this idea while travelling, I always take a sketchbook with me. I had an idea coming from some GMTK jam games, I thought that giving power to players to make their own creations was a fantastic thing and I wanted to push this as far as possible. But of course, too ambitious for a single person project and here I am, seven years later trying to finish this project.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
During my journey I faced a lot of ups and downs, a lot happens in seven years of life. I did a 8 month break because I faced technical challenges I didn't knew how to solve at the time for example. Sometimes health is just not there and I have to rest myself as someone having a lot of migraines for a majority of my life, but I think it's just the regular challenges anyone will face with any passion in their life, it's part of the deal.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
I chose Unity because this is the engine I learned at school and in my first professional project too for Ubisoft mobile games. I feel very comfortable working with it, I know almost every feature of it and can do a lot of actions by reflex so it's quite a time saver for me. I feel that Unity has quite the good size/features for a solo project. For sure if I was starting my journey now I would have maybe started on Godot but maybe I will wait some years for safety regarding possible ships on different platforms like steam-deck, etc...
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
Keeping motivation over the years has definitely been a huge challenge. It's really easy to get distracted and switch to a different project. I feel lucky for being able to work so many years and stay motivated on this single project, I think it's a lot due to the core idea of the project that I still love, I really wanna do my best to create a game that pushes the creativity of players.
Sharing on social medias was a huge motivation boost, this project would not have been possible if I stayed in the dark for so long so thank you so much to everyone who liked, commented on my post, this is so important to me!
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Keep things small, really limit any project to it's core idea and nothing else. Otherwise we always diverge into "one more feature" and it will become 90% of the time spent on the project. I also think that in the same logic, target for really small projects is really a good thing as long as we don't have multiple games shipped, experience and knowledge.
But for sure it's way easier to give advice than applying them so I got quite carried away but for my next projects, in the future, I will really apply this way better!
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
Thank you a lot for asking me those questions, have fun in game creation, always think about your health & mental-health first because this is the most valuable thing you have! Have a great day!
Vhalenn ❤️
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