Today the video game market is a huge market that is constantly growing, this is thanks to mobile phones, because everyone has one and, whatever mobile, whatever brand it comes with an application store from where you can download thousands of games.
INTRODUCTION
Today the video game market is a huge market that is constantly growing, this is thanks to mobile phones, because everyone has one and, whatever mobile, whatever brand it comes with an application store from where you can download thousands of games. Many of these games have been created by individuals who have had to do a lot of research before they can publish a game. With this article I will try to facilitate this process with my experience developing video games, which are collected on my website: ShinyDuckGames.
FIRST STEP
The first thing to do is to choose which tool will be used, since depending on the tool, one programming language or another will be used. You can choose between using a video game engine that allows you to publish the game on different platforms or directly choose the framework needed for the platform where you want to publish it. The main difference is that the game engine makes the creation task easier, as they have a built-in physics engine, collision detection and many other features.
If you choose the game engine, the task will be more difficult, since there are a few: Unity3D, Unreal Engine, Godot etc. and one must be chosen to suit our needs. Here is some information about each one:
Unity 3D: It is a video game engine where it is programmed with C #, it is very powerful and at the same time has a very good learning curve, as there is a large community behind and many tutorials available to all. In addition, it can be exported to almost all existing platforms and gives you the ability to make games in both 3D and 2D. Another benefit is that it’s free if you make less than $ 100,000 a year.
Unreal Engine: It is a very famous video game engine, it is programmed with C ++ which makes it a little more complicated. It also allows you to create 3D and 2D games with ease and export them to a large number of platforms. Unreal Engine is also free but only up to the first $ 3000, after earning this amount you must pay 5% of the profits.
Godot: Godot is the free open source alternative that allows you to do all of the above, and you can also choose which language to program it with, such as C #, C ++ or GDScript, a Python based language.
If you want to do it with the framework you have to choose the platform where you want to publish your game. In the case of Android, you can do it with Android Studio and program with Java or Kotler, if you prefer to publish on iOs you have to do with XCode and program it with Swift.
VISUALS
Deciding which models to use, wheter 3D or sprites (drawings in the case of a 2D game) can be a problem, as creating them yourself and looking good can be more complicated than programming the entire game. But thanks to many charitable artists posting their creations on the Internet for free, great art skills have not been needed to create an aesthetically beautiful game. We can find these resources in places like Itch, Kenny, Opengameart or PolyGoogle among others. If you want to create your own, you have free software like Blender for 3D models or Krita for sprites.
PUBLICATION
Once created the game will be published in the application store, if we want to publish it onGoogle Play, you have to pay $ 25 and you can publish all the applications you want. If you want to publish it in the App Store, you have to pay $ 99 per year. If you want to publish on Android apart from Google Play there are other application stores available, although Google Play is official, in countries like China or India use other stores such as the Tencent application store (in the case of China).
POSITIONING
Once the application has been uploaded to the application store, our goal is to make the users discover it, we have to give a reason to the user to download your application and not another. To achieve this, we will use ASO(App store optimization), which serves to improve the positioning of our game inside the app store. There is no only way to do ASO, it is simply to follow guidelines that will help you to rise in the ranking of applications. Guidelines such as how to write the description of the application, how to design the icon …
As you can see creating a video game does not have to be a complicated job, the Internet is a place where you can find any kind of information. With this article, effort and dedication you can make very original and fun applications. Finally I leave you two examples of applications made following the guidelines explained in the article:
App Name: Orbit Project Chosen video game engine: Unity 3D You can download it here. |  |
App Name: Apocalypse Chosen video game engine: Unity 3D You can download it here. |  |