My first project was a jump and run based on drawings by my son. I learned that it’s pretty hard to get a six year old to draw you sprites. My kids liked the two levels I could cobble together from his drawings.

The player was a stick figure that could find a dagger and a spear to fight zombies and later a spider boss. Later he was supposed to meet a friend who’d continue the game with his crossbow but I didn’t get to go on.

I made the levels from tiles made out of drawings. i wanted to pivot to entirely drawn rooms with basically one page being one room, but time, energy and motivation left us.

What I did somewhat complete was Diarrhea 4, a game based on a Lemmy comment. I wanted to add some flying aliens as enemies and stages to getting higher but making this game has drained my health. But at least it is somewhat playable.

But using free assets kept me sane during development. Even when not everything ended up looking like I had envisioned it.