![]() There’s quite a good community on Stencyl so normally you can find someone else who’s been through it who can help you. IOS profiles and certificates were a bit tricky, not knowing any programming, but it’s never been that bad. What are some of the biggest issues you face during development? I like to try and build things and experience them, and I often find a thing seems like a good concept in your head, but once you try and build it you get a better understanding of it. If it’s something a bit bigger, like Golf Zero and it’s going to be level based, I do a bit of pen and paper design to figure out how the levels will play out, but I’m very hands on. Because they’re normally quite simple games, quite small arcade games, it’s easy to get an early idea if it’s going to be fun or not. ![]() If a little idea pops into my head, I prototype it right away. How do you go about designing your games? Something would have to badly break within Stencyl to force me to learn something new, because I know with a new engine I wouldn’t be creating for a while. I have a tool right now that allows me to create. I’m interested in other engines, looking at things like Game Maker: Studio and Construct, but I’m very unmotivated to learn something new. And Unreal Engine didn’t really seem suited for mobile, or for what I wanted to do. I’ve tried, but it’s not gonna happen anytime soon. But the barrier for Unity is having to learn C# or JavaScript. So I’ve experienced these more professional, powerful engines. I actually worked at a game studio for a year using Unity, but as a game designer. I did a two year course here in Stockholm, and I used Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. I actually studied game design after I released my first app. Stencyl caters for everything that I want to do. Do you think it would have been a good investment to learn a different tool? I use a little bit of Audacity for a bit of editing sound files, but apart from that, just Stencyl. So they send everything as a PNG, and I drop it straight into Stencyl. I work with artists, I don’t do any art myself. The only things I’m using are Stencyl and pen and paper. It’s pretty much just Stencyl, since I’m not a game designer, and I’m not a programmer, but I’m visual scripting. Eventually I decided to take the step, once I got enough money, to get the Apple Developer license and the license for Stencyl to export for mobile. It went quite smoothly, and I actually started making some money from Flash games. He said to start off making some Flash games, which I did. Eventually, a guy who made an iOS game I liked sent me Stencyl, a program with visual scripting. I started speaking to a few little studios, and so on, but it was looking expensive and difficult. I had no background or experience, so for a while I was designing on pen and paper, talking to other developers, trying to work out how I’d go about hiring someone. When I saw the iPhone I said, “I want to make a game for the iPhone”, so I started looking into how to do that. I’ve always been a fan of mini-games on Flashportal, Miniclip, and on the AppStore. But a lot of the mini-games interested me. But the bigger games I never pictured myself making, AAA games like Metal Gear Solid. I had consoles for years: Super Nintendo, Play Station, and so on. Mad Skills Motocross, played a lot of that. Games like Stickman Golf and Angry Birds. I just loved the little mini-games on it. I was working in the fitness industry, working in gyms and personal training for about 10 years, then I got my first iPhone. Colin presents some insight into his workflow, and how to succeed with just the ability to design a game. I interviewed him (along with several other independent developers) to see if they had any tips for how to succeed. You might be surprised to find out that he created all of these games without writing any code, or making any art. He created Battle Golf, Dunkers, Golf Zero, Touchdowners, and Wrassling, just to name a few. Chances are you’ve already played a game Colin made.
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