Indie dev.
Self-taught.
Still learning.

Origin story

It started with a headset and an Xbox

Before I ever touched a keyboard with intent, my cousin handed me a headset while he was gaming on the original Xbox. He was in a chat with a friend and I could hear the voice through the speakers. Being a kid, looking at the screen and seeing a character looking at me, I genuinely thought the game itself was talking to me. That moment of pure wonder stuck.

Growing up on Halo 2, flash games like Storm the House and Happy Wheels, and stick-fight doodles in school notebooks, I was obsessed with games long before I could make them. I had pages full of arena layouts and platformer designs I could never actually play. The desire to build them never went away.

The real spark came watching that same cousin developing a mod on his laptop. I had no idea what any of it meant but the idea that you could create whatever you wanted completely rewired how I thought. From that point on, making games was not just a hobby. It was the plan.

The journey

15+ years of building things

Game development

Moving to Godot and scoping way down

I have dabbled in pretty much every major game engine at some point. Unity and Godot have always been the easiest for me to work with. After Unity pulled some moves that did not sit right with a lot of developers including me, Godot became my clear choice going forward. It just feels right and the community around it is great.

My cousin has always been a massive inspiration for the game dev side of things. He has seen what I am capable of but I have fumbled it every time. One thing he said to me years ago has never left my head. I told him I wanted to make games and quit the 9 to 5 grind because those jobs bring me no joy and just add stress. He told me that games take time and that playing games takes away from making them. Then he asked me something that I still hear any time I stop developing and just go back to playing or pile yet another unfinished project onto the stack:

That quote rings in my ears constantly. Every unfinished project, every time I shelved something to go back to gaming, it comes right back. It pushes me more than anything else.

This time around I am starting in Godot and scoping way down. Just the most basic version of a game idea, then one feature at a time. Hopefully people find it interesting and I can keep updating things over time with input from others.

Honest reflection

What AI took and what I am taking back

I will be straight with you. I went from a self-taught developer who had built real skills over years to someone who let AI generate most of the work. Projects shipped fast. Weekends felt productive. But somewhere in that process I stopped growing and eventually stopped having fun.

The wake-up was gradual. Video after video of creators actually making things, a growing restlessness, and eventually a depression from losing the thing I loved most. I cut social media off my phone. I stopped the endless scroll. Cut out all the distractions and always negative noise. I started building with my own hands again.

It is slower. It is harder. It feels like being a beginner all over again because honestly, in a lot of ways I am. But the fun is coming back and that matters more than shipping speed ever did.

The people behind it

Who believed and who did not

When I was coming up through learning Roblox and starting to figure out Unity, I would try to explain what I was doing to my parents. They were not really interested. That hurt more than I let on at the time because this stuff was everything to me. They never really understood gaming or the internet and saw it as a waste of time, something that would not lead anywhere real.

They pushed hard for college and a degree, which I understand now was just them trying to look out for me. But by my late high school years I knew that path was not mine. I struggled in school. I was never interested in what was being taught. My brain was always somewhere else, thinking about what I could build next instead of sitting through classes that meant nothing to me.

When I finally told them I wanted to be a game developer and actually make a living from it, the response was that it would not work. That I should just go to school and get a job in tech the normal way. That hit hard and honestly it stuck with me for years. It put a real limiter on my drive even when I did not realize it was doing that. I know they were just people trying their best to guide someone they did not fully understand yet. But it hurt.

What I am hoping for, and what keeps me going, is that one day they will see what I have been building and realize they underestimated what I was capable of. That there are other ways to make something of yourself that do not involve a degree or a 9 to 5 that drains everything out of you.

Right now

What I am focused on

Skills and tools

Languages I have worked with

Looking ahead

Goals for this journey

• Rebuild genuine programming skills from the ground up, no shortcuts
• Actually finish and release a Godot game, however small it starts
• Answer my cousin's question with action, not just intent
• Revive the YouTube tutorials that helped people along the way
• Document the struggle openly, the bad weeks as much as the wins
• Build things people can actually play and enjoy
• Prove to myself again that making things is its own reward