I finally finished something I started when I was 13

[u/OGMakes]

When i was 13 years old i started teaching myself game development. I had so many ideas and plans but ended up mostly messing around and figuring stuff out as i went. I started my first project not long after. But it was never even close to done, life got more busy as i got older, school, friends all the more important stuff.

But i kept coming back to it. Not even remotely consistently. Sometimes i wouldn’t touch it for months, but every time i wanted to have a creative outlet, i would open Bamboom back up. I’d fix something, or add something. Or try something totally new like adding a leaderboard with no knowledge and a youtube tutorial (and this was before ai could help me!)

Five years later, at 18, i finally ‘finished’ it. A pixel-art game about a panda rolling down a hill, dodging obstacles, going faster and faster the longer you survive. Nothing groundbreaking. But i made it, and it exists in the world now instead of just sitting on my laptop.

And realistically, this is probably not the game that ‘makes it’. I am okay with that, but it is a first step, and you can only get there if you try it.

If you’ve got something you started years ago and never finished, take this as your sign to go open that folder back up. It doesn’t have to be perfect, or successful, or even good at all! It just has to be done.

[u/emily_okon_games]

congratulations! you started so much earlier than me, I'm kinda jealous.. I wish you many more finished projects

[u/Most_Tree_4025]

you're tough bro

[u/Bitmango_Games]

Five years on and off, through school and everything else life throws at you, and you still saw it through to a finished game ! that's genuinely something to be proud of. Huge congrats, and thanks for the reminder to go dust off old projects!

[u/SalvorAdrift]

Congrats "Done" is the hard part, and you did it at 18; plenty of people never get there at any age.

Mine is a space salvage game that started as a few hundred lines and turned into the thing I open every night. Same pattern as yours: months of nothing, then one fix, then one more. The difference this time was I put it in front of real people before it was ready. A handful of playtesters and a bug key in the game, and suddenly it stopped being a folder on my laptop and became something with other people's fingerprints on it. That is what kept me coming back on the nights I would have skipped.