Publishing my first game: Kana Game

Hello, I’m here to write about the first game I released!

if you just want to play the game, go here: Kana Game

Download Kana Game

This was a crazy experience, I went through a lot. But now I am relieved that I got the first version of the game done.

Background

Before starting learning game development, I already had some background on backend development (about 2.5 years working with it). Since I use Typescript a lot I wanted to start with it for making games, so I learned Phaser.js, a javascript framework for making games.

Looking back now it feels kinda crazy to start working on Kana Game, because at the time I had about 2 or 3 weeks of experience with Phaser.js and developing games.

The idea

I was practicing, so I made 3 simple games and shared with just a few friends, turns out they shared with other people, and a friend of mine who is a japanese teacher reached out to me, asking if I was able to create a japanese teaching game.

I got so excited with the idea that I started making the game without even thinking twice, it was a lot more work than I expected. I sketched a bunch of ideas and ended up coming up with this game.

Se você fala português e tem interesse em aulas de japonês, dá uma olhada no insta desse meu amigo: @nihongo_ok

I can’t draw

I have zero art skills, and I didn’t want to make a game with only squares and circles. So I had to browse the internet looking for free to use assets for my game, luckily I found some stuff and was able to work with it, I am satisfied how it turned out.

Credits:
@Elicuaycong (mage)
@Reff_SQ (slimes)
kenney.nl (scribble pack)

I also know nothing about music, I bought the music license online.

Porting to mobile

I had zero experience on mobile development, it took a while to make it work. I’m still getting used to it. Android development wasn’t that hard actually. The real problem was developing for ios.

I didn’t port the game to ios until it was ready, because of the annual apple developer fee, another big problem was that apple requires you to develop it using a mac and having an ios, so I had to borrow it from some relatives.

And big surprise, after porting the game for ios, the game would not render or play sound on some devices, it was crazy hard to debug without having a dedicated iPhone or Mac. But whatever, it’s solved now.

Too much to do

I always had new ideas, and it was making the game scope bigger and bigger, I was feeling overwhelmed by myself. One time I had to say it’s enough and stop there. So I’m releasing the first version of the game with the most basic features and if it gets enough attention I will keep updating it.

This taught me a lot on how to organize myself better for next projects.

Social Media

Well, I also don’t have a lot of experience with social media, I had an unsuccessful youtube channel when I was a kid, but that’s it. I think I have to use it to promote my game somehow.

So I created this website, my account on some social platforms, and let’s see how it goes.

Finally

Well, that’s it, I think this was pretty long (the blogpost and this project). I’m glad it’s released, and it was a good experience

Thanks for reading!