+Planning is essential; need proper documentation, a clear vision and a roadmap. While you cannot plan for every circumstance or issue, you can form a coherent idea, build a strong foundation & execute much easier than hacking away at it randomly. Learned to prototype basic mechanics first. Spent a lot of time doubling back, or performing tasks out of reasonable order because of my approach.

+Learned that I can still learn and apply that knowledge to create something useful for other people. A full game is a good start to a portfolio that shows hard work and aptitude level. Made something that other people can experience! This game may be less than 20 minutes long (if you don't die), but it's still a complete game.

+Utilized the slowdown of the pandemic to create a video game (And a skillset). Finishing things is so important, and this turned into a pretty epic undertaking for one person who is just starting to learn.

+Need a better software than notepad for keeping track of goals, tasks, needed changes, etc. Tool choices are critical, but the tools are less relevant than the art & science itself. Glad that I took plenty of time to research what would work best for my needs and vision.

+Everyone has their own process in the creation of art. I chose to embrace my process, while still incorporating what seemed useful from the materials I used to learn from.

+Other people and their support / interest / guidance / help along the way are the only reason that this project existed in the first place. So thankful for Molly, Mom, everyone who listened to me talk about making the game, everyone who has worked on making games and those who helped by creating the tools, systems, and answering questions / posting solutions / creating free content / posting tutorials / making videos – they are how I've arrived at this point.

+Enjoy working in the 3D-Action type genre. Towards the end of the project, began thinking more and more about what's next for the world of Nidra & game development.

+Project became much more time-intensive as one necessary task after another cropped up, and postponed challenges (especially coding) added up to create a ton of work to wade through. They were right when they said that “The last 10% of the game takes 90% of the time!” One issue after another came up in balancing. Made the most of my time when doing test runs by using a written document keeping track of everything that needs changing or fixing, then going through and resolving those issues, then repeating.

+Careful with backups, data storage, data security & prefabs. Some kind of formatting issues on my computer's hard disk caused me to almost lose every bit of work that I had done on the project (along with some other stuff that wasn't backed up) – it was kind of like my life flashing before my eyes.

+Hotkeys save so much time, and I know so few. I have spent hours battling Unity / Blender when there are easier, more efficient ways to do the same work with the proper knowledge and setup.

+Tutorials made this project possible from the start; in fact, the entire project is based off of the Unity: Junior Programmer tutorial set. However, overuse of tutorials led to a setup that was (in many ways necessary) and again, time-consuming to wade through. “Tutorial hell” it's called, relying solely on the solutions of other people to every problem or mechanic that pops up is a sure way to stagnate with the growth of your craft and it's related considerations. It cost me many hours using other peoples' solutions and not understanding how they work. Default to using your tools' documentation first, then use other peoples' solutions.

+Keep a log of how much you work, a timer solution would be best. I did not do this, so I only have estimates. (Wish I had kept that time log at this point)

+Game development has been cathartic and healing, gave fulfillment and meaning to how I spent my time. This has been truly an amazing experience that has also been rife with concerns, doubts, fears, loss of momentum, long periods of not working on any form of real self-improvement (or the game), etc. Many times I thought that the project would never be finished, just thrown in the garbage of the other old projects.

+Even making a simple 20 minute game took me from my estimates about 800 hours. Now, I tried to do as much of it myself as possible (as opposed to using other peoples' creations)... and had to learn how to program, how to use Blender to make 3D art, how to navigate Unity and a hundred other things from scratch, with no previous experience. But, it was my choice to scale the project as such and add in the extra time-consuming tasks to learn & make it better. I would be able to create this game again in much less time, because of having already mentally worked through the major issues to tackle in order to make it. There are now some fairly easy methods of extending the length of the game now too, because it is in a (relatively) complete state.

+Games are not easy to make; I would not say Insectotron 3D is a “good” game but I will say it's “fun” (to me, gotten no feedback from others so far) and was mostly about learning from & finishing a game project anyways. I have heard this called “Effort Shock.”

Well, that's really all for now. Greatly appreciate all of you who help people learn game development & design and, of course, the Game Players! Hopefully, (especially if you are new to game dev!) this summary has helped you in some way or shown you something from a new perspective. If you try Insectotron, please let me know what you think by leaving a comment... Enjoy the day!