I’ve always wanted to create my own games.
I’ve dreamed of creating something similar to “Ori and the Blind Forest”, “Shovel Knight”, or many other great indie games.
But it took me a long time to understand that these kinds of projects were completely out of my scope.
I have a full-time job, two kids (that I take to their activities and play with every day), and other personal responsibilities.
My wife works from midday until night and, for me, it’s really hard to find even a couple of hours during the day to work on a personal project.
So how am I supposed to create a game of that magnitude with such a small amount of time?
That’s where expectations come in.
We all have big expectations, especially of ourselves, and I’m no different.
But I’ve found that in order to make progress — in order to finally create and publish something — I needed to reduce them.
Does that mean I have to forget about my dreams?
Not at all.
It just means making them smaller, at least for now, while many other things are happening in my life.
Over the years I started almost ten prototypes and small games, abandoning each of them for the most common reasons:
- scope that was too big
- lack of experience
- gameplay that wasn’t fun
So I decided to create something smaller.
Something just for fun.
Something to learn.
Something to finally have something to show.
Reducing my expectations about myself lifted a big weight from my shoulders.
I was finally able to say:
“Ok, I will create something.
It’s not going to be perfect.
It’s not going to be a hit.
But doing something is a lot better than having nothing done.”
And that is how I started this small game called Balanced Dungeons
