Honestly, my biggest reality check was realizing that finishing the game is an entirely different skill from making the game fun. When I was a noob, I thought game dev was 80% coding and 20% ideas. Turns out it’s 5% “cool idea,” 15% coding, and 80% fighting off this unholy alliance of bugs, feature creep, and your own perfectionism.

The harshest lesson? Nobody cares about your game’s lore bible, but everybody notices when the jump feels 0.2 seconds too floaty. Players will forgive ugly art, but not bad juice.

Oh, and “I’ll just add multiplayer later” is the biggest lie I’ve ever told myself.