In the beginning there was nothing. Well not entirely. I was lucky to be born after everyone else, after all those people who started coding in C or assembly, back when gaming wasn’t the huge industry it’s today, back when SDKs were mostly non-existant and visual editors had to be built in-house. Here is the story about why I became a game designer, and how it all started.
I started experimenting in making games with Game Maker and RPG Maker, the basics when you’re a 13-year-old that has access to Google and can type “how to make game” in a reasonable amount of time. I always had this urge to be more than a consumer, and I have no idea why. When I saw a movie or played a game that truly moved me, the hyperactive nature inside me just wanted to do the same. Do something that great, write a story that cool, a game that clean. I have a rigorous mind by nature but, I get bored very easily, and so my experimentations on those very simple game engines didn’t go very far.
The SCP Foundation
Back in 2014, creepypastas were hype for any kid. That’s when I discovered the french SCP Foundation, that weird website about that worldwide organization who kept paranormal creatures in boxes to study them. After a while of reading those and enjoying the chills, I discovered that it was basically open to contribution and decided to join. I think back then the age limit was minimum 16 y.o. for obvious reason, so I did what any reasonable would do : I lied about my age.
I discovered a very welcoming community of weird people, that liked weird stuff like horror stories, science fiction, programming, tabletop roleplaying. It was a big part in how I constructed my culture, and most notably why H.P. Lovecraft stays one of my favorite authors today.
This community was harsh, they had a high standard for the website and how people should be : you had to write well, even in casual messages, you had to read the guides and only ask questions if you can’t find the info by yourself. I think this experience educated me and played a big part in who I am today. I wrote a few SCPs, and then went onto writing short fictions which you can still read today.
This is when I decided I could make a big project with a potential audience. So I went to create a game with RPG maker featuring the characters from the french universe. I spent a lot of time, with someone else from the branch, making pixel art characters, and I started scripting the game events and outlining the game’s story. However, it was kind of uninspired, and the actual gameplay and difficulty was basically non-existence. During this project I discovered that I loved using a game engine, mapping, and letting people test my work. It was hard, and I got bored and blocked at some point, because of the lack of actual gameplay. I did spend a lot of time on details, custom interactions that would reward the player for exploring the world.
Anyways, the project stopped.
The Aleph-team
After that, I worked on an original audio fiction based on the french SCP lore with a few friends from the community. We had lots of fun making it, and people seemed to like it. That’s when we started wondering if we could make a smaller RPG game with a more limited scope. One of the members started experimenting with cartoon 3D models for characters, and we loved it. That’s when we, as a team, started to call ourselves the “Aleph-team”. The goal was simple : make cross-media projects for the SCP foundation. This is the first time I had to “lead” a team, I organized everything on discord, created task lists and design documents, what a cool experience.
So the 3D RPG thing changed to become a mobile endless-runner on mobile. I programmed the whole thing alone in blueprint, this was my first contact with UE4. And we went quite far honestly. We also had assets integrated later, but I couldn’t find videos of that.
Conclusion
So this is it, my very first video game project, how it all started. Game design came quite naturally to me, and I started documenting on the topic back then. I was immature, full of dreams, and I still get a bit nostalgic thinking about that time.