How to make your very own video game!

First, have very smart, generous friends.  Second, offer up wine. Third and most importantly, make a promise to keep the game simple and avoid exploiting said friends' generosity. That is, outside of being a bossy cow for the minimum 12 hours it takes create iphone app genius. 

And here it is! Twelve hours of video game making magic later, and you get Sassy the Cow bouncing her way across rainbows, through skies of fluffy clouds and unicorns. Mindless. Ridiculous. Borderline genius?

CLICK ME!

Of course, the outcome isn't the point... So, what is the journey to video game genius?

1. The game framework. What will the game do... and what are the nuts and bolts to make it works. So, coding? Ummm....not in the repertoire.  But who needs a repertoire when you have Shirley! And a fabulous little program called Construct 2.

2. Main character.You know, the egg-throwing cow thing. Many hours of unsuccessful avatar app testing later, Shirey tell me about Framy. Well, if you thought 52bouncyMoo was genius, the people at Framy are like, ge-ni-USSSSS! They're app for that! And alone, made this 52firsts experience amazingly happy happy. 

3. Art assets. Bane of my video game development experience. I can't illustrate, and I certainly can't find consistent looking free images online. Many many hours later Shirley tell me she has images. Of course, she does. Ok, at this point, Im getting the feeling this has been a little bit about teaching a man to fish... 

4. Music. Free please! Thank goodness for incompetech.com! Amazing selection of amazing hits like "Jaunty Gumption" and "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys". So, to properly enjoy the full experience of the turn we ended up selecting, aptly entitled "Run Amok", please turn on your sound!


Game complete... Marketing required.

5. Game name, icon, description, a hope and a prayer. So coming up with a name and designing it are brutal enough. But then, you got to write the description and get it by the App Store gatekeepers. And that, is a crapshoot! Will Apple like me enough to allow me into the App Store? 

Success! Here it is again:

An huge thank you to Shirley and Aaron for making me dinner and collaborating and guiding and mentoring and accommodating and tinkering into the late night and to finally getting the silly cow a'jumpin'! In the end, all I had to do was udder the word and my video games dreams came true!

visit shirleyman.com for all the wondrous things Shirley can do!