4 Years, 0 Shipped Games. Here's Why That Changes Now.

I want to be an indie game developer.

I have been learning game development for at least 4 years, and getting no where. But i am sick of it. I need to stop giving myself excuses, and just do the work. That is where you come in... I want you to hold me accountable. I am not asking, this is an order. (Jokes obv, you do you).

Where This All Started

I grew up playing games in the 90s, which sounds unremarkable until you factor in that I was a girl, and back then that was — apparently — not the done thing. None of my friends played. There was no one to talk to about it. I just quietly loved it on my own, which honestly? I didn't mind.

I loved the problem solving. Figuring out how to wake up Snorlax in Pokémon Yellow. Grinding through Final Fantasy Tactics, collecting every last thing because it felt so satisfying to make progress. When I went on family holidays, I loved it! Growing up as an only child, meant I was able to hide under a parasol and play my gameboy for hours. Much to my mums dismay.

Fast forward a bit, and I somehow ended up doing a choreography degree. (No idea what I thought I was going to do with this degree). Midway through I my university offered some Adobe certificates to me as I was okay with computers — Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop — and something just clicked. I stayed up late. I built things I hadn't been asked to build. I couldn't stop.

I couldn't restart my degree, so I self-studied for years while working minimum wage jobs. Sometimes more than one at a time. I'd get up early to study, built websites for charities for free (they can't say no if you're not charging them), and eventually — somehow — landed a junior role at a digital design studio.

That was the beginning of 10+ years as a frontend developer.

The Part Where I Got Bored (Thanks ADHD)

Frontend development is genuinely brilliant. I'm good at it. It clicks in my mind, I can see the code like lego blocks which magically fit together.

But somewhere along the way, the work stopped surprising me. Nothing felt hard anymore. The briefs started blurring together — another dashboard, another table with pagination, another widget that needed to be slightly different but also exactly the same. I tried pushing into 3D with Three.js, which I loved, but the reality is that most clients/companies don't need to have floating geometric shapes in the background. They need a dashboard. With a table.

So I started learning Unity.

Four Years of Trying Really Hard and Having Very Little to Show For It

Here's the honest version of the last four years:

I have spent over £2,000 on courses. Every course promising you can be a game developer in six months — I did it. Thomas Brush, Codemonkey, Game Dev Unlockked, Udemy, YouTubers with Patreons, the lot. I would start strong, get excited, then quietly drop off somewhere around week three when the project got too complicated or I ran out of energy after a full day of coding at my actual job.

I did game jams. Game jams are — and I say this with love — horrible (for me). Crunch culture in miniature. Every single time I'd hit day one, realise my original idea was genuinely bad, and either pivot into something worse or just quietly give up. I completed one, and the outcome was not something I am proud of.

The pattern was always the same: I'd get excited, I'd make the project too big, I'd get frustrated, I'd stop. Repeat.

I am not telling you this to be self-deprecating for sport. I'm telling you because I think it's important to be honest about what "learning game dev on the side" actually looks like when you're already a developer by trade. It is hard to sit at a computer and write code in the evenings when you've been sitting at a computer writing code all day. The enthusiasm is there. The brain is not always.

So Why Is This Time Different

Two reasons.

One: I genuinely cannot go another year without shipping something. I just can't. Four years is long enough to sit with a dream and not act on it properly.

Two — and this is the important one: I have a game that already feels good.

I'm building a space shooter. Small scope, proper plan, seven phases. You fly around, collect materials from asteroids, upgrade your ship, travel further, uncover a story. It's got voicemails. It's going to be funny and a bit chaotic and very much mine.

And right now, in its very early state — before the story, before the polish, before most of the mechanics — I can fly the ship around and shoot asteroids and it just feels fun. That sounds small. It is not small. I have never gotten to that feeling before. Every other attempt fell apart before anything felt like anything. This one feels like something.

That's why this time is different.

The Plan (An Actual One)

I'm building this in seven phases, starting with the thing that matters most — getting the feel right before anything else. Movement, camera, basic asteroids. If flying around doesn't feel good in week one, nothing that comes after it will save the game.

From there: the loop, then combat, then zones, then story, then polish, then the full game. I'll write about every phase as I go — what worked, what didn't, what sent me into a brief existential spiral at 11pm on a Tuesday.

I'm documenting this publicly because I need the accountability, and because I suspect some of you are in a similar position — creatively restless, technically capable, and just trying to make the thing you actually want to make. If that's you, hello. Pull up a chair.

Come Along

I'll be posting here regularly — dev logs, honest post-mortems, the occasional "why won't this compile" meltdown. No filters, no success-story polish. Just the real version of trying to become an indie game developer while holding down a job in London.

If you want to follow along, sign up to the newsletter below. I'll drop updates in your inbox when there's something worth sharing — which, based on my track record, will sometimes be progress and sometimes be a cautionary tale.

Either way, it'll be honest.

— Louise