PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hello! I'm Erika aka BerryLemonade a solo dev and artist from Brazil. Nice to meet you!
TELL US ABOUT PRETTY SWEET.
I'm not an experienced developer and I think the best way to learn is to make small projects so I started to think about small games that I enjoyed playing and simple mechanics.
The concept comes mostly from nostalgic Magical Girl shows like Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure and I wanted to make a small management simulation for players to feel like they're one of them!
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
I wanted to develop it quickly and learn as much as possible so engine and code wise it was actually simple. What took the longest time was art assets. I think I was overthinking it a bit but it was fun after all.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
I used Unity because I started learning it around 4 years ago and that’s the engine with most tutorials and forum help so I thought it would be easier to find solutions if I ever got stuck. Nowadays there’s a lot of content for engines like Godot so that makes me think if I was starting today maybe I would have picked it over Unity as I’m mostly interested in 2D and Godot is good for that.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
As I said before probably the overthinking. I think I could have made it a bit faster but I was very focused on having the perfect aesthetic, but perfect isn’t really necessary.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Make! Small! Games! Like most devs I started with a big project but after a while I was honest to myself realizing I did not have the skills to deliver the quality that I wanted so I changed my mindset. Small games teach you the whole process from start to finish, including dealing with the public, and there’s less pressure to not make mistakes. At the beginning of our careers the focus should not be on success but on learning the process. The mindset of “Even if this flops, I’m okay with that” helps me a lot.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
Thanks for having me and for reading all of this!
Feel free to play my other Itch games.
-Erika
❤️
