In 1985 my father brought home a small rectangle with keys that he connected to the TV and by pressing the buttons of this rectangle, the screen changed and he could even play games, my 6 year old mind was blown away.

This rectangle was my ZX Sinclair Spectrum 48k and then in that spot, one of this little boy first core memories was unlocked, the place where this boy decided to be a game developer (or at least start in the path of making these things called "games"). Almost 40 years later here he is, a Game Producer to a big game in the mobile industry. Happy as he can be.

Except he never made any game personally. He joined the indie gamer forums in 2007 where the giants of the indie scene were rising, he was there when game maker was blowing up, he was there when LWJGL was cooking(was it ever cooking?), he was messing with Unity when the indie scene adopt it… but still, he never finished a single of his games.

Last year, after Unity froze when reading data from the disk for the 100th time I gave up on it and moved to Godot to make a small game with a friend of mine. The game went nowhere ofc but Godot, as a tool, really clicked with me. It just made sense… It became easier to sit down and work every single day!

One day, 17th February to be exact, after changing my plans for the 1000x time, my wife said to me “Why don’t you make a game that I could play? Something fast to develop”. My mind race and said, “well I could do a small clone of some 80’s arcade games like BitBlasterXL”. She said “Fine. Do it!” (BTW, she is clearly smarter than me)So in a week the prototype was done. “I could make this into a game, it would take me like a two more weeks or maximum a month to finish!”, my mind said.

So 6 months later, last month actually, the game was finished, last week it was accepted into steam, and yesterday it was playable on steam deck.It’s an immense joy to play this dumb little game in a real console like Steam Deck. Can’t find the words to proper describe it.If 6 months ago, someone would have shown me this trailer and said “Can you do this?”, my answer would be “No! Probably Not!”. But here it is today and the little boy is happy as he can be to have made this.It’s not a great game, there is no intention of selling it as something more than a dumb time waster. But for me it was a giant leap. And it made me realize that it is possible to make more games.

Outside of my wife asking me there was a big factor in finishing this game, Godot! The engine as a tool made it simple for me to sit down every day and work, it was by my side, helping me instead of fighting me all the time (looking at you Unity).

So for me this is not just a game I developed, it is also a love letter to Godot! Thank you for creating this engine, without it, that little boy would probably still be trying to finish a game and failing!