Get The Treasure

I wanted to understand three things I had never done: physics engines, game development, and how a game actually finds an audience once it exists. Reading about them was not going to settle it.

A 2D physics puzzle game built on Box2D — the same engine behind Angry Birds — designed, programmed and self-published in three months. Fifty hand-built levels, a level editor so the fifty-first did not need a programmer, and a custom soundtrack from a sound designer.

I did the concept, all the programming and the level design, managed the project and the testing, and commissioned the art and audio.

The level editor is the decision I would make again. Fifty levels is weeks of work if each one is code and an afternoon each if the tool exists, and building the tool first feels like a detour right up until level twelve.

Distribution was the real lesson, and the one I had not expected to learn. A self-published web game lives or dies on getting onto other people's portals, which means the Mochi Media integration and the syndication mattered at least as much as the game design did. That is a marketing and partnerships problem wearing a technical costume, and it is recognisably the same problem as getting a developer platform adopted.

Roughly two million levels played worldwide, and distribution across more than 200 websites.

It is the oldest thing on this site and still the largest number of people I have put a thing of my own in front of.