2013 was the year where I've started my programming school, and since that time, my interests in programming and game design has grown a lot. 
The road of a gamedev differs for each person, and depending on the period, it may also bring different inspirations as well. 
It was quite a dive into the old files, and there were a lot of school projects and ideas, here I wanted to share the interesting projects I've worked on, or had participated in the past decade.

This is going to be a long post, but I think it's important to remember the highs and lows of my career.

--2013 and prior

Prior to 2013, I already was drawing levels on paper, and made use of Mario Level Editors like SMBX and Super Mario 63, so there definitely was already an interests prior that time in making levels, or games. But I hadn't really gotten into publishing something. Unfortunately my enviroment has changed quite a bit since then, so those levels are lost to time.

In 2013 I started my programming school, I remember that one of our early things were designing a logo.
The Logo first existed as a flaming blue 'S' in the shape of a shuriken, but after a few iterations, I went with this design:

It kept the Blue 'S', but it also has the double 'P' inside as well. Which fits with my username's initials: PPS.

--2014

The times between 2013 and 2014 were mostly project tests, I didn't knew about a proper game engine, or even XNA until at the end of 2014. So in that period I was only making games with what I knew what was possible to my knowledge. 

Which was...the command prompt:

There were 2 CMD games, one was called "textbasedadventure", which was a school group project. 
And then there was "textbasedarena", which was my personal project:

TextBasedArena

TextBasedArena was an RPG game that basically focusses on just fighting enemies.
There was a little hub area where you could buy stuff, and by entering the arena, you had to fight a monster in turn-based combat.
Even though you could type the full word command, I also made single-letter shortcuts to make the commands easier to execute:

On first sight, it did look pretty solid, but this was in a time before I even knew what an array or loop was. 
So since then, this project eventually got abandoned by the amount of work, and now I sometimes look back at it just to see how much I've grown from it since then.

The first XNA Scrum project:
There was also an XNA school project, in practising Scrum/project management in teams, which was pretty exciting. There was a choice between 3 genres of making an XNA game, and our team went with Asteroids. Our team may also make a name, and we went for "Team Rocket". Which was totally not a reference to anything.

Unfortunately, I don't remember much of our teamwork. I think it was confusing as there were too many new things at once.
I also can't really recall what I had done for the project except the sprites for the ship (which got replaced at the last days before deadline). The result was also a bit of a mess, as things felt inconsistent and it kept crashing within a minute of booting up. Buuut...it's at least an Asteroids game...?
Regardless, it did learned me some stuff, mostly Gamestates and classes, and the first steps of making an XNA game with spaceships, so I kept this project as reference:

--2015

The year of Terraria 1.3's release, and the first time I went playing Skyrim, and also the time I improved a lot in drawing and went making OC's and fanart through requests.
It was a wild ride, and it didn't stopped just there either, I also went trying out expanding my Arena game into a Windows Forms project:
...yes, a game in Windows Forms:


It was nice to see sprites reacting to your input, and there was a bit of a gameplay loop, but I realised soon that Windows Forms is not meant to make images move.

Trexventure
Sometime later, on Internship, I was taught a tutorial about using Unity. This gave me ideas to make a game in Unity.
The first attempt was a driving car as practise, physics were hard to manage, so eventually I renamed the car project to a Moon Rider. fun times.

There was also a second attempt at making a platformer game in Unity, called "Trex Shooting Simulator" or "Trexventure":
I think there was not really a goal, just me messing around in a platformer enviroment.


There was a single-level concept to practise around with. But I've never really gotten to that point, as making new weapons and new enemies is more fun than making levels:

Regardless, I've enjoyed playing around with it until it's progress became stale. And realised that Unity is not my preference to make a classic 2D platformer. So this platformer project got shelved until HertenHeld.

The second XNA scrum project
In the second half of 2015, I got to do the year over, with the same lessons and the same projects, as I was not ready for the examination year, but had the potentional. So this meant I got to do the XNA project twice, yay. 
It also happened to be the same asteroids project too. So I've wanted to make up for the losses of the project from last year, and wanted to more actively engage in it.

And with great result, not only was this project more polished, but I also made ALL the sprites for the game.
I remember I was also involved with the Perks, the scoreboard and the game-over screen, so it felt nice to see how this group effort payed off much better:


Another part that I was proud of was the Game-Over screen, as I made the name select screen, and this little name select screen, was the moment I finally learned how to use loops and arrays, and discovered the synergy between them.

And from that moment, a whole world opened up. Everything I've worked on in the past could be optimised. And everything that I thought is too much effort to copy-paste, can be simplified into a single method. This was my moment I really understood programming and the joy of it.
And from that point, I felt ready, and wanted to learn more.

--2016

Space Siblings
I've wanted to put my experience to the test and started working on a new game again.
This time, I've looked at both Asteroid School project games, and see if it's possible to use that as reference to make my own.
This project in return, became Space Siblings:
The concept was simple: A Space Shooter game where you control 2 ships that needs to support each other. Each destroyed an unique type of Asteroid. Besides asteroids, there may also spawn aliëns that shoot.
The reason to go for 2 ships was to try more practise with Arrays, and test if I could reuse the same kind of function for a different object (ship 1 and ship 2). the concept was pretty fun:

The concept did change through feedback from friends. I also got some help for the sprites as well.
As the game became more polished, I've wanted to show the game to my mentor, who was really impressed by it. Also from knowing where I came from. Eventually I've received music from my mentor for the game as well.
And so, after 2 months, the game was finished, and I had finally published my first game...


...on the Terraria Forums! :v
For a quick context: Back before everyone used the mainstream social media, and in a time before Discord and Reddit were populair.
I was mostly hanging around on the Forums of a single game called Terraria. I was pretty active there along with other people and friends, it was a pretty cozy community. So logically, it made sense to release my game there: Open, but still confined in a group of people with similair interests. It was well received and I've kept updating it for a few months.

Dungeon's Depths
After Space Siblings, I've wanted to make a game in collaboration with a friend, MiltVala, with the idea to game-ify a dungeon boardgame he played:

It had some mechanics from the boardgame, but also from my own Arena project.
But eventually I didn't found the gameplay enjoyable enough, and I wasn't sure how to fix that, as normally you don't play boardgames by yourself.
Regardless, I still think it was a nice experience when it came to generating board tile.

--2017-2021: HertenHeld

The year I graduated from college and got a fulltime job.
I've gotten a lot into indie metroidvanias here, the most notable been Cave Story and Momodora: Reverie under the Moonlight.
Here I longed to make a Metroidvania game by inspiration of Momodora II. And as a homage of Metroidvanias in general. Which has become my favorite genre since then. There were a few elements, like the targets, from the Unity platformer back here.
This didn't worked on XNA, but I was impressed with Game Maker Studio 2 that was recently released (now just called Game Maker), so I've bought that engine and used it to create HertenHeld.
For the entire duration of the development, the only focus on gamedev was on HertenHeld, and I didn't allowed myself to get distracted by unfinished side projects. So this has been an experience:



As this has been my biggest project to date, I think this game rather deserves a post of it's own.
In the meantime, you may check the already existing history here:
https://ppowersteef.itch.io/hertenheld/devlog/163164/the-3-years-of-development
https://ppowersteef.itch.io/hertenheld/devlog/486169/2nd-anniversary-blooper-com...

Besides the start of HertenHeld, I've also discovered itch.io, which is this website. And it was basically a site dedicated for publishing indie games without charge. I've decided to use this for publishing Space Siblings and future games since then.

--2018

This was the time I've played Celeste for the first time, been a while huh?
From there, I also saw it's easter egg and met with Pico-8 for the first time. 


I've also came accross a game called Micro Mages, an indie game made for the NES. That game really pulled everything the NES is capable off to it's limit, and I've gotten invested in people optimising in a very tiny, but cozy workspace. It was something I've wanted to do too.

It were all ideas that came in mind during the development of HertenHeld, and I've set my priorities on that project first.

--2019

HertenHeld got it's first publish as a Beta Release, back when it was still called Hjort Helten.
The game was already playable, but it lacked the polish that I had in mind. The game followed 2 updates later that year to improve it a little bit:

There were thoughts of other games in mind since then, like a remake of the Arena concept. Or a different platformer experiment using HertenHeld's engine. These have been nothing more but just concepts.

--2020

Year of the Pandemic...yeap.
It was a rough year, but went working with polishing HertenHeld regardless.

--2021

HertenHeld was finally released, and while it felt relieving, I also did some updates on the game based on feedback.

With HertenHeld finally done, I had the possibilities to work on smaller games again!
So after a few months of breaktime, I picked up Pico-8 and went remaking Space Siblings on it as an engine test:

I had never worked with the engine before, but I've managed to remake most of the game in just 3 weeks. I've come to love the Pico-8 engine for how fast you can make something work. Which is great for pasttime projects.
Instead of really focussing on the exact same game, I rather wanted to give this a slightly different experience while experimenting with Pico-8's possibilities. 

The concept of Fallen Star also existed, where I had ideas of a roguelike vertical platformer inspired by Kid Icarus and Kamiko.
This was once intended to be my first commercial product. But I felt burnt out on Herten-Held, and didn't felt ready working on it yet.

--2022

So instead of starting a new big idea, I wanted to try out something smaller first.

This proof of concept was made in Pico-8 in just 3 days, which really was impressive for me.
The idea eventually grew out to the Shepherd game, which took some time to polish it out (4 months), but it was a satisfying result regardless.

During summer, I also decided to join a gamejam: The GMTK Jam, with as theme "Roll of the Dice".
So I went with making a simplelistic dice roller game:

It had a bit of a "Flash Game" feel to it now I look back at it, which is kinda funny.
Also first time messing with Game-Maker's in-game physics, which was a bit hard.

An update on HertenHeld was also planned, but I have postponed that.

--2023

Here I wanted to start off with the Fallen Star game that I had planned, one that I called "Project: Valkyrie" before.
The idea was to give this game a retro look, so instead of attempting that Retro look in Game-Maker. I went back to Pico-8 again.
After having worked with HertenHeld, I did understand the progress of making a platformer better. So the progress went smooth.
The idea with Fallen Star on Pico-8 was also to test the limits of Pico-8 here, so eventually, Fallen Star became the "Micro Mages" project that I've wanted to do:

The project was intended to focus on just one character, but as the game progressed, I've wanted to play around with Pico-8 possibilities, and used a palette swap to add 2 extra characters. They wern't intended to include, as I just added them for fun, but I sticked with it.
They also fit the Kamiko inspiration well, with the choice between 3 girls with different abilities.

And with good result. After 3 months of developing, it was well received and has become my most succesful pico-8 game so far. (And second to HertenHeld), I've gotten a few playthrough videos/streams out of it and watched them to use for feedback.

After Fallen Star, I've heard about more possibilities to  do with effects, so I wanted to experiment with them, and updated Space Siblings and Shepherd to give them a bit more flair. Notice effects like Explosions and poofs.

 I also wished to update Fallen Star with it, but the problem with testing an engine to it's limit, means that there's also no space left to add more content.

And this is it, this is where I am now. At the last day of 2023.
It has been quite the journey, and it's also all done in my pasttime, because I enjoy doing it.
It also sometimes makes me wonder where I would have been, if I did not have chosen for this path, but I think the thought of always wanting to make a game would then continue to linger.
I think it's already impressive with what I can pull off, but I do wonder if I'll make it far enough to really make it a job. As it's a risky market.

It was a post I've talked about the progress, but it's also a physical and mental toll to ask too. Stuff like stress and pressure is still something I felt from working so long on HertenHeld. But I'm working on it and recovering slowly from it.

I...definitely think I've spend more time writing this than I think it should, but if you've read it all the way till the end, thanks a lot for your time!

In the future, I'd like to revisit HertenHeld again, and either give it an update, or use it's engine to make a new platformer out of it. But what that platformer can be, is something I'll tell for another day.

Best wishes for a new year!