It is done! 

Today marks the release of my first game and even though it's merely a bloated study project, this means a lot to me. I wanted this game to not only be a random collage of things I learned so far. I wanted to create something fun and well rounded with the limited skills I had after the first months of "self taught game dev". Learning and developing went hand in hand though and many things in the game are the product of my very first steps in these areas (f.e. 3D animation). 

After I had built the foundations of the game and had a working prototype with the most important features and some content, development slowed down. I thought that continuing to work on this project just meant filling a semi-fun game with content that no one cares about, without learning something new really. I'd be better off just leaving it, learning new techniques and creating an even better prototype from scratch later on. And I do believe this is a good approach! But I decided against it and to actually create the little minigame I envisioned from the start. I wanted to know what it takes to lift a prototype to a release ready level. And I'm very glad I did! The thought of releasing a game puts a different pressure on its quality than if it just disappeared deep down in some WIP-folder. Suddenly things like UX aren't just avoided by saying "It's just a prototype so I don't do it, but I would do it roughly like this and that and polish it and thats nice and would work". I had to let people playtest, evaluate feedback and all the exciting stuff that is vitally important to game development! And I'm aware of and expect my game to be played by roughly 9 people, 8 of which are friends and family. But I want them to have a good experience and it was a great lesson for me. This process has shown me the intricacies to the attempt of creating a polished video game. And wow is it a lot of stuff, even on a small scale, seemingly simple project like this. It will never be perfect, and thats okay!

Not all of the features I wished to implement made it into the release version of the game.  The main constraint being time, I had to cut some cool elements. I could polish this project forever, but at some point it really is better to finish it and continue growing and learning with new projects. That is why these things didn't make it into the game:

• Branching pathways, making for more diverse runs
• More varied encounters (f.e. blacksmith for reforging gear, wishing fountain for flat stat-buffs ... )
• More enemies with more varied mechanics
• ...

Now that Cursed Kingdom is released, I am so hyped to learn new stuff again and work on future projects. But I also won't abandon this game! If you happen to enjoy it, but discover a bug, some unbalanced stuff, or anything else that annoys you, please let me know! I will try my best to fix it asap!

Thank you for being interested in my little journey, it means a lot to me! Cheers!