We all love playing games here, but have you ever wanted to know a little bit more about how they get made? Well, thanks to one indie developer who wanted to showcase his design skills, you can watch an entire game get designed in a Twitter thread.
Developer @davemakes started this Twitter thread at the beginning of the year, sharing a GIF of colourful tiles floating through a diagonal game space. Over the course of several months, he then developed the idea into a fully-fledged rhythm and puzzle game called Mixolumia, available to buy on Itch.io and posted each painstaking little step on social media. His tweets show how the game and its design evolved from start to finish, including some of the testing of certain mechanics and changes in the design along the way.
It’s a lot to work through, but fascinating if you were ever interested in how some of these small indie projects come to life and the amount of effort it takes to turn even some of the more basic game ideas into reality. And this is outside of the actual coding and graphical design effort, which itself takes large amounts of time – especially when you want that end result to actually be a fun and addictive game. It also highlights the importance of regular playtesting and enhancing the mechanics of the game as you realize its flaws or need the game to have greater longevity and skill requirements.
As for the game itself, Mixolumia appears well designed with the potential for a lot of fun, pairing a simple art style with immersive music and sound effects, and gameplay that builds on the addictive nature of Tetris. All things which you can’t go wrong with. Hopefully, all this effort in posting the details of the game design process will help to make it a good seller and give him some decent return for the developer’s efforts.
Last Updated: August 17, 2020
