Learn by failing

I overcomplicate things. When I get excited, I follow every side path that opens.

The first game I set out to build was an RTS. I called it Thousand Unit Skirmish, and it ran in the browser. The world on that site is called Vaelora, and you can still open it. You could gather food and wood, raise buildings, move a formation, and play through the fog, on your own or with one friend. I got pretty far. Then I looked at what was still unfinished, and at how much I still had to learn, and I knew I could not ship it from where I was.

A painted valley called Bellweather, with a winding river, farms, a stone arch, and a waterfall. — Bellweather, the world still open in the browser.

So I drew it down to Starfall. Falling stars, a small board, a native iOS game in Swift. Matching stars as they fell was the game I actually liked. I kept going anyway.

A pixel night scene of a coastal observatory, a crescent moon, and a glowing crystal above the water. — The sky I liked. I kept building around it.

I named the stars and gave them faces. Spark, Sunny, Nova, and the others had expressions for landing, growing, and clearing. I sent a painted landing to Meshy, to rebuild it as a 3D scene and paint it back down into sprites. I sent pictures to Higgsfield, to move the clouds and to try a short story: Spark, a telescope, and Nova slipping away. I was learning the tools, and I was learning their limit. Complicated characters need animation I can’t do on my own yet. Blobs, stars, and soft shapeless things fit the work I can finish. The faces came off. The stars stayed.

A satisfying puzzle was still too much game. I needed one mechanic, small enough to hold.

I remembered a 2002 interview with Yoshiaki Koizumi, the director of Super Mario Sunshine. He started from the water pistols he played with as a kid. The shoulder buttons on the GameCube controller felt like squeezing one, so Mario got a backpack, and the island grew around spraying water. The team then invented ten nozzles, a new one for every situation. They kept three: hover, rocket, and turbo. A backpack full of special tools was becoming a Zelda game. Mario needed the water. I looked at Block Blast and Flappy Bird the same way. One clear action, repeated, until you miss and want another try. I don’t have to climb a mountain. I have to start where I am.

JellyJaunt is that start. It is snake, again, made small and pixelated. You are a jellyfish in a glowing aquarium. You steer, you take a bite, and your tentacles grow behind you. Leave room to turn.

Learn by failing.