Hello and welcome back!
For those who have been following my learning diary, this is the first of my Development Diaries, where I’ll be focusing on creating my first solo game, Snakes and Ladders!
Introduction
For my first solo project I’ve decided to make a version of Snakes and Ladders, mainly inspired by my little boy. He’s about to turn 4 in a couple of months and one of his favourite board games is Snakes and Ladders. He has his own Amazon Kid’s tablet, so I’d love to try and make something that we could play together on that.
I love the idea of creating a board that looks a little like a space station with levels and ladders that player climb up and pipes that they would slide down if they land on them. Taking a quick look in the Unity Asset Store there looks like some really good free assets there that I could use and I think they would look quite cool.
This solo project is also a great opportunity for me to put my primary skills to good use. Whilst I have a background in Software Development, I also currently work as a Project Manager, and have previously worked as a Software Development Manager. In both of those roles I’ve used Agile methodologies to deliver projects, and so I’ll be using the Scrum methodology to help deliver my game.
My aim here isn’t to have a fully polished and working version of the game. There will be some stuff that I don’t know how to do yet but this feels like something I could have a really good go at and get some good headway on, so I’d really like to spend a few weeks developing that before choosing my next Pathway.
Starting my first solo game – Snakes and Ladders (Kind of)
Ok, so time to get stuck in! My first move is to plan out at least some of the high level milestones within my project and get an idea of how much I can fit into a weekly sprint, which should give me an idea of overall development time.
For my first steps, I’ve setup a scrum project within Jira. I’ve worked with Jira for many years now and some I’m very comfortable with it. It’s an easy to use tool, and for a solo project such as mine is free to work with. It also makes it easy to create Epics, setup Sprints and backlog items, and to create a roadmap of your project.
I’ve started by setting up 5 epics within my project:
- Game Board
- Players
- Dice
- UI and Menus
- Audio
I may add to these as the project progresses, but this is certainly enough to get me started. Within these epics I’ll then create work items within my backlog that will form my sprint each week. I’ve decided to start with the first Epic, which is the game board.
For my first sprint, I intend to setup the project, find and import assets for my game board, and then start on the first rows of my 3D Snakes and Ladders.
If I have time after that I’ll add more items to my sprint. Once I get about 3-4 sprints in then I should get a rough idea of my baseline and therefore will be able to plan my future sprints more effectively. Right now however, it’s about seeing what I can get through within a week.
My sprints will run during the working week, at roughly an hour per night, giving me five hours per sprint. I’m keen to see what I can achieve in that time and may use those results to either up my development commitment each week or reduce it in order to balance out family time as well.
With my first sprint all setup, I’m ready to get started. Let’s get creative!
Until next time,
Dan
Dan Does Games 
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