I was really excited about the One Game A Month challenge as soon as I heard about it.
For about two years I've struggled in fits and starts to make my way into game development. This hasn't been productive in any of the ways I hoped when I started. Its really difficult to be fairly experienced as a developer, which I believe I am in my day job as a web developer, while struggling really hard at an area in which your experience just doesn't exist.
Its like being a pilot who doesn't know how to drive.
But this challenge provided a new breath to this little hobby of mine. It gave me a scaffolding to experiment, to learn, to reflect on finished projects. I had spent far too much time on game projects that stretched on far past their exciting phases, bogged down by bad decisions and regret.
And it has worked.
I have a lot to learn. I have a lot of experience to gain through trial and error and mistake and discovery. I have a lot of fun to be had making more small games that scratch the little itches that have been building up. I have a really exciting 2017 planned for game development!
I've been doing One Game A Month for three months now. I've released threesmallgames. These aren't great games by any stretch of the definition, of course. But they're games that I'm learning from. They're something I'm really excited about and I have needed something personally exciting as a developer for a long time. These are good times for me, and I hope to have more to share about them soon.