The GEODE Chapter

Welp, after about two and a half years, I released my first game on Steam, GEODE. The original goal for this project was to learn how to make an entire game. I think I can confidently say that I did that, this project taught me soooo much about game infrastructure, system design, and all the bells and whistles that come with the 'solo-developer' role.

Findings

There are some things I wish I did differently in the grand scheme of things, and some things that I found out about myself + how I feel about game dev. For the good, my god am I excited to continue my game-dev journey. I would have guessed after working on this for 2.5 years, I'd feel gassed out and unsure about the future of this career. But I can honestly say the opposite is true. I want nothing more than to keep making games, and become a more capable developer. This also taught me that I love game system designing. Writing the netcode, designing the item container system, enemy pathfinding logic, and all of the other intricate systems in GEODE were easily the highlight of the experience. It feels so cool to plan out a feature, iterate on it, and actually have something working on the other end. If I could snap my fingers and have my dream job, I think it would be a Game Systems Engineer role at a small indie company. I seriously can't think of anything more that I would want.

Regrets

I have some things I would change about the way I worked or did things, though not many. I would have planned even more. About 1 year into making GEODE, I chose to fully restart from scratch because I realized my foundation wasn't scalable and overall messy. So, I made the tough decision to literally start a fresh project and take it from there. But before I actually started, I spent around two weeks designing everything in a google doc, my Software Engineering degree really came into play here. Designing out relationships between different systems, interfaces and subclasses, and distributing roles to proper systems was awesome. My only regret was that I didn't plan out deep enough. I had a fantastic foundational layer set out, but when it came down to the later nitty gritty systems, I lacked proper planning. This was most apparent in working with Unity's NGO system, progress was often slow and difficult. So I would have liked to turn that two planning weeks into a whole month and properly plan out my netcode.

Thank you

I had a lot of encouragement from friends and family throughout this project, and as cliche as it is, I wouldn't have been able to this without them. There were a lot of days where I would question whether or not I could conquer this project, and felt like I was wasting my time. A special thank you to Ethan for being my right hand man. This man was genuinely excited to playtest every few weeks and give me more feedback, I can't thank him enough. Dustan and Jake for playtesting and giving feedback early on helped shape the game into what it became. And my ex-girlfriend Cat in the early days. Things may not have worked out, but she was always in full support of me working on this project. Lastly a huge thank you to my Mom and Paul for letting me live with them while I continued working on this game, and encourage me. It's safe to say I wouldn't have been able to get even close to done without you guys.

What comes next?

I have a lot of mixed feelings, excited to finally have this under my belt, and terrified for what the next chapter holds. I don't really know what I'm going to do next, but I know I want to learn more and dive into 3d gamedev. No more of this little kid 2d stuff (I really actually love 2d games, no shade). If by some unknown power GEODE gets a few players who want more, I'd love to continue adding more content. I have ideas for more biomes and bosses, but in all honesty it felt like it was finally time to release and see what happens. I plan on doing a few game jams, exploring new systems, learning about shaders, and prototyping any new idea that pops into my head. I want to enjoy the learning process for a while longer. I'll also be applying to jobs again, though to be completely honest I'm not hopeful I'll land anything. Not because I'm not capable or don't have experience, the industry just seems so freaking tough right now. The secondary goal for this project when junior-year college me started was to look good on a resume. I mean, a fully released steam game? That's gotta hold some weight. Right..?

Conclusion

Anyways, thanks for reading, and thanks again to those who encouraged me throughout the way. Maybe I'll make another one of these in 8 months.

-Quincy / PhD

Published on June 1, 2026 - Game-Dev