☆ The Inspiring Zenzizenzic Game Dev Journey Story From Ruud Koorevaar ☆ @ruudko #GameDev #GamersUnite

This game is a thing of beauty....

A hypnotic Shoot Em Up that draws you in with it's amazing art style and keeps you hooked on its 
"bullet hell" gameplay...

For me I instantly think "Lumines vs. Geometry Wars"

So what's it all about then?

Let's rewind shall we?.............

Ruud Koorevaar set about making a video game around 2 years ago.....

His challenge to himself was "Could I Make A Video Game?"

He hadn't done this before and started out with no skills in game making, just a passion for video games.

As time wore on his game became more and more accomplished and polished as he learned the skills required to build a shoot em up...

The passion he had for his game has shone through and he has now managed to secure a successful round of Kickstarter funding to complete the project.

Here's the story of Ruud's inspiring Game Dev journey told by himself.....

"Without any practical knowledge on game design and development except for what was garnered over the course of 15 to 20 or so years of playing games, I set out to build a game myself. I practically didn’t know a damn thing.

It was November 2012, just graduated and unemployed when I installed Unity3D, the well-known video game development engine. Pleasantly surprised with the relative ease of moving around and messing about in the engine I started to learn how to code. By going through some tutorials and with the help of the Unity community I was able to get a fairly decent footing on how to work with the engine. I was still horrible at it though, but that wouldn’t stop me.

The game to be built would need to be fairly easy to make (due to my lack of skills), but should feel really tight to play and be a challenge to beat. The genre which came to mind was a 2D shoot ‘em up. It’s a genre I always had a fascination for, imagining really skilled people maneuvering through a veritable, murderous maze of bullets in a scrolling environment.

The plan was to start with a limited scope, a simple idea. Just a single level, a couple of shooting abilities, points, while nurturing that feeling of “let’s go again!”, and that’s it. Not surprisingly, all the while still unemployed, that limited scope was gradually expanded until hardly anything of it remained. Additional movement controls were introduced, more weapons were added, challenges, difficulties, co-operative and dynamic gameplay, bonus levels, leaderboards, unlocks, and so on. Luckily, I was still unemployed, giving me the time to do all this stuff. An open world, sandbox-like experience with procedural generation is even in development as an extra gameplay mode! Something which I personally didn’t thought of conceivable when I started out.

The graphics always remained to look prototype-ish though. That’s something I didn’t want to mess with, Mostly to prevent me from crapping all over it (I’m no graphical artist). Thankfully by keeping this abstract style consistent throughout, it ended up working quite well!

I dubbed the project Zenzizenzic, it’s a mathematical term for the eighth power of a number through squaring , which fits the theme of the game. Although quite difficult to pronounce, the name does has a ring to it, saying “hey, this is a quick paced game and it’s probably just as difficult as pronouncing the name is!”.

bignic, known from the awesome game “Zombies.”, was willing to lend his music to Zenzizenzic. The pieces started to come together and an actual game was starting to take shape. The soundtrack is actually already listenable and purchasable onSoundCloud. It’s definitely good stuff, and I consider myself lucky to have this great artist on board.

A couple of months later, I’m able to present you this demo of Zenzizenzic, my first venture in game development and design. Soon I hope to be able to finish Zenzizenzic up and offer you the full game, taking a year total to complete the game while learning to code, design and all that good jazz. But for now I hope you’re able to enjoy this brief taste of many things to come! I hope that it may inspire aspiring game developers to just give it a go, dive in there with a focused idea and a goal and see where it takes you!"

I don't know about YOU but that has really inspired me to get down and dirty and get involved in the Indie Game Dev scene.

It illustrates that if you have the desire and perseverance to learn then you have a future in the indie game dev world.

Here's a cool video of Ruud's Brilliant video game "ZENZIZENZIC" for your viewing pleasure....

Make Sure YOU Back The Greenlight Campaign >>HERE<< If YOU Like What You See...

Download The Beta >>HERE<< Too