Nitro Blaze

Concept:

I’ve never made a racing game, so let’s make a racing game 👍

What Went Right:

It was a pretty lax week. I’m realizing that it’s better to relax while dealing with stressful situations since it doesn’t change the outcome and it makes life better. Mind over matter.

Nitro Blaze is what I call an API game. It’s so generic, you can throw any asset, API, software library at it just to implement it and see how it runs. Cars go vroom and there’s nothing to invent. It’s a shovelware game.

That being said, there’s still a lot of things I didn’t get a chance to shovel on 😅 I’ll be working on this project in the coming weeks to test out new libraries.

What went wrong:

Looking at the logo of Nitro Blaze pretty much sums up how I feel about it- painfully distasteful and normal. It’s the oatmeal of video games.

Looking behind me, I see a bunch of games that lack any soul. They’re all Frankenstein monsters with limbs attached from failed projects, broken dreams of assets creators and the output of an over caffeinated, under rested game developer. I’m looking at these things and they’re all garbage…

I can write these off saying that they’re tech demos and I’m building it for a learning experience. Which I am. I’m confronting problems that I’ve been putting off for years and my seemingly chronic anxiety has been getting better week after week.

At the same time… there’s gotta be an end to the apprenticeship. Eventually I will consolidate all of my libraries and assets. Eventually I will illuminate every dark corner of the Unity game engine and know every checkbox ,slider and dropdown like the back of my hand.

But then what? Do I have it in me to create anything truly unique? Or have I just become an expert of regurgitating decades of experience passed down through the various channels of YouTube, GDC and ChatGPT? Are we all just copying copies of a copy? Is this what art is?

Looking in the horizon, I don’t see technical roadblocks being the threat anymore. The thing that I’m worried about is creativity and originality. To truly stand above the rest, I have to look above the endless droves of clones, copies, inspired-bys, and sell outs. There’s gotta be something more to this than I’m seeing.

The more I wrestle with the computer, the closer I feel towards breaching that barrier. 

What I learned:

There’s more to game development than just solving technical problems or making money. A game without heart is just a 2 bit piece of junk. 

Purposely making a game with heart with the expectation to be rewarded for it is an oxymoron. It’s really gotta come from a sense of just being in the moment. 

I have to lighten up with my creative process. It’s too rigid and I’m missing out on opportunities to make something truly unique.