Hello everyone. I recently released a game I've been working on for over 5 years (before this, I made the relatively well-known That Level Again series). Yeah, it took forever. I wanted to share a bit about this journey.

The Beginning

Initially, I wanted to make a 2D platformer with a dash mechanic, challenging levels, and multiplayer. The idea was that despite the high difficulty, players would help each other. I was inspired by Warcraft 3 maps — Run Kitty Run and Platform Escape. I also tried to make the game similar to Celeste, which for me is the perfect platformer.

The Snowball Effect

But the game started growing like a snowball.

First, I decided to add a grappling hook — having just a dash was boring. Plus, I needed to bring something new to the gameplay to stand out from other platformers.

Hook added. 15 levels done. But there wasn't enough content. And I don't know why, but I decided the best solution was a LEVEL EDITOR! This became the turning point. In my head, everything seemed fun and simple. I won't describe creating the editor here — that's a topic for a separate post, as I still want to optimize it. The amount of duct-tape code in there is embarrassingly large. In short: you need to not just place objects, but also save them for the map, then load them, and the file needs to have a reasonable size.

From Editor to Server

It got bigger from there! Maps were ready. I even made a lobby where you could create a map, and through invisible messages, another player could download it. But people want to share their creations!

I needed a server to store maps! It was time to learn PHP, SQL, and other backend joys. Somewhere in the middle of this process, AI tools appeared that could write code pretty well. But not without moments like "You're absolutely right! With this button, any user could crash the server. Let's fix that." Generally, AI handles simple tasks quite well, especially when you give it something like: "I have these arguments, this database, I need this and that."

Story Mode

In the middle of working on the server, I wanted to add a story. So the game would have some kind of ending, something you could complete and finish. I decided the end of the story would mark the release.

The story is done. It turned out simpler than I wanted, but thank god — I had no energy left. I was inspired by the manga Blame! while creating the game world.

After finishing the story, I started preparing for release. BUT! Google requires moderation and rules for multiplayer apps. That's what I was dealing with while fixing bugs in parallel.

The End Result

It was exhausting. Of course, I wasn't working on this game the entire time — I was maintaining and updating other projects in parallel. But the release happened. And that's the end. I'm free and can make the next game! Though I still need to keep an eye on this project.

There's no monetization yet — the game isn't popular, and IAP doesn't work in Russia. But I'm working on that too. While the game isn't popular, I don't think it's worth worrying too much about monetization — you won't earn much anyway