Welcome!

Hello, what's this all about, then?

This blog aims to keep a record of the things you have to do to get yourself properly set up to develop a game. It'll follow my spare-time development of my own game, provisionally titled Boarding Party, an extremely niche interest turn-based tactical combat game. If you know who Julian Gollop is, you'll know what I'm aiming for.

I'm not going to mention anything about learning programming, as I know how to do that and I assume you do to, no this is about the practical nitty-gritty that takes you from 'I know how to program' to 'I have made a game'.

Who am I to give you this advice? Good question. I'm Andy Krouwel, a professional games programmer/designer* currently working at Fuse Games on a game for Nintendo (no link, I assume you've heard of them). I learned programming at primary school in the mid ninteen eighties, and have carried on ever since. Although I've also worked in educational software, mobile communications and space systems, games have always been my main interest and I've always had something on the go at least in my spare time. I've worked on games for the ZX81, Commodore 64, Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga, PC, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS & Wii, some published others not, and written for both Retro Gamer and Edge.

My spare time is where we are now. While part of my job is coming up with game ideas and pitches, here we are looking at my own project. As I say, it's hyper-niche and so not commercially viable so doesn't conflict with my day job.

And so we move on to post number one...

*So don't ask me to do music or art.