What should I do for my first game?

Hello! I am kind of new to UE4 and was wondering what kind of game should I make if it’s my first time making a game. I know quite a lot about 3d modeling and programming and what not but I’ve never finished a game. I’ve only made broken fragments of a game before giving up because of frustration. What is a good first step. I thought about a 3d pong clone, but I wanted to get the input of those more experienced than I. Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Good ideas for first games that I’ve come up with.

  • Pong Clone
  • Simple platformer
  • collection game

These are just my opinions, my first game was a platformer which I released a week ago on Kongregate(of course it didn’t garner much attention), though you can generally make mostly anything for your first game. My best advice is keep it simple and make it something that you can feasibly complete in a month.

I can’t agree more with this.

Keep it simple, and try to reproduce another game, with one small twist of your own devising. Make a list of the absolute BASICS required to make this happen, and do not, at any point, deviate from this list. You will learn how to create a game, and how to not take any aspect of modern games for granted; menus, maps, inventories, pickups, buffs, etc… all by hand, all by scratch, and pretty soon, you’ll realize that even simple games are not so simple!

And then make the next big thing :cool:

Something simple you could finish in foreseeable future!

Im a newcomer to gaming myself, and while I do know programming quite a bit, I know nothing of 3d modelling. So, I did the absolute basic thing u can do with UE4 : make a maze like game. As all it needs is knowledge about the Trigger Boxes and The box brush, it is quite a good start. As u have more ideas, or when u learn something new, implement it in this maze as if it’s a new hurdle. This will allow you to experiment on various stuff and gain the satisfaction of making something. :slight_smile:

I personally would develop a simple paper 2d game like mario. :smiley:

This is a good advice you should follow. Pick something extremely simple, and then even simpler than that. You’ll get a great sense of accomplishment when you finish it and are able to show it off to friends and the community. Then you pick something more complex.

you can try the shooter game , vehicle game demos and work from that

I don’t agree completely with the “make something simple you can finish quick” mindset that everyone suggests.
Sure, it’s more reasonable and it might fit people that get put off by big hurdles and might give up. But at the same time, if you’re that kind of person, then game development is definitely not the right thing for you.
That said, I don’t think you should set out to create a new World of Warcraft or other huge AAA title, you have to be realistic.
At the same time, creating something too simple and uninspiring such as a pong clone might not be the best way to go about starting game development either, at least not for everyone. Sure, you can finish it quick, but does it really have to be quick? Unless you’re in dire need of money quickly, there is no reason to rush it. And let’s face it, if you’re in dire need of money quickly, game development isn’t the right way anyway.

We started out making our game a few years ago, prior to that we had literally zero knowledge or experience with game development. Now years later, we are still working on the same project (although we did completely start from scratch with everything but the idea when UE4 came out and we switched over from UDK), we have learned everything from modeling, sculpting, texturing, animations, programming and tons more.
The reason why we haven’t gotten bored of it yet is because we decided to create the game we want to create, which is something we are really passionate about and it’s something we feel that we can be proud of when it’s done. For me at least, I’m completely sure I wouldn’t feel that way and probably have gotten bored of it already, if I set out to create something quickly, like pong.
Just be realistic, if you think it’ll take one year to make, it’ll probably take three, and be ready to have to climb huge hurdles and work extremely hard, but as long as you’re passionate and realistic, you can set up bigger goals than pong.

One of my beginning goals is to recreate a lot of old Atari games in UE4, some with multi-player. I’m starting with a multi-player 3D Pong (well, more like air hockey. but very similar.)

It has actually been a very enlightening experience.

The goal for me right now isn’t to become the worlds best game designer. My goal is exploration, really. Exploration and failure.

Failure you say? Well, that sounds like an odd goal.

It’s not.

You WILL fail. A lot. Over and over and over. You won’t get it right the first time, or the second time, or even the third time. You will fail again and again and again. What is left over at that point are your successes. It is these successes that are my ultimate goal and to achieve those you MUST fail.

And when you keep it simple, it’s easier to understand why you failed, at least for me.

There are so many different approaches to making a game, that part of that exploration is learning what works for you. Starting with a simple, well established mechanic makes it easier to explore low-level plumbing that is common to many games – at a high-level you don’t have to think as much and can focus on building a working game in UE4.

Just my thoughts. Obviously everyone is different, but this is what is working for me.

My first game was kind of an icy tower clone, albeit with crazy difficulty levels, and very bad coding :smiley: But that was in Unity and in C#, I have no clue what’s best first, I’m still learning UE4 but what I came up with is this:

I have 1 project where I perform various simple tasks. I started with a material on a box, then made a particle system, then made a trigger blueprint and added some simple detection logic, then made a simple timer, then I added sound, then I made a physics interaction and so on and so forth.

So I’d say my advice would be to get your hands dirty with simple frequent tasks that would be required for a game, after you fill your level with lots of different things you’ve done, take a look at them as a whole and form an idea about a game that could use all those things you just practised. It can be something as simple as match all 3. But the point is that after that you’ll feel a lot more comfortable.

I went through the same process in Unity, although the scale of UE4 is much bigger, you end up thinking that you need to know everything before you know anything. Just keep experimenting and eventually you’ll see that you’ve got enough skills to make something basic, and maybe even entertaining.

no all of those require a lot of stuff a mean with car games you need physics and with shooter games you need ai that don’t look super dumb with animations with guns that look good that work good and sound good and you probably will need team ai that won’t shoot threw things and have aimbot and shoot you