What I learned from building my first HTML5 game

Have you ever wished to make your own game? Playing games is fun and a lot of people like playing games... But when you think of building a game, maybe a lot of code and hard work cross over your mind. But building a game can also be fun and awesome. Today there are a lot of frameworks and engines that can help you build a game of your imagination. If you want to start building a game, here are few things that you might expect on your way of building a game.

5 things I learned building my first HTML5 game:

1. You won't finish on time

Deadlines. Every programmer or team of programmers has deadlines for their projects. If you put a short deadline (few weeks or even few months) you probably won't finish on time. Even if you calculate the time you need for graphics, audio, bugs, and other stuff you will probably run into unexpected problems that will steal your time. Well, that is one thing that you will learn while building your first game.

2. If you are a programer graphic will be a bigger problem than making a game

When I started making a game, I didn't think too much about graphic. I decided to make something simple, something that doesn't require nice graphic. But while building a game with my team I have figured out that I will need some nice graphic for my game. So the problems started. First with searching and choosing graphic. Then, with building animations and scaling a lot of sprites in the game. And of course, if you want to make your game for different screen sizes it has to be responsive designed. So that was a lot work, especially if you are not a designer.

3. Watch out for bugs.

When you think you are finished... Well, you are not. Testing a game and finding bugs can be frustrating and sometimes it can take a lot of time. You can even start asking yourself when will your game be ready. You must be ready for spending time on looking and repairing bugs. 

4. Working in a team is better than working alone

To create an awesome game and promote it you will need a team of developers, designers, marketing analysts, video and audio developers...  Of course you can always buy sounds and graphics for your game and that is ok, but audio developers and graphic designers can help you choose things that fit into your idea and gave you a better perspective on things that you don't understand that good as they. So if you plan to build an awesome game with good sound and graphics than it is better to work in a team.

5. Marketing strategy is very important

Even if you build a great game nobody is going to play it if you don't tell others. So how do you tell others... Well, there are a lot of ways of doing that. One of the most common and the best way is social media. Facebook and Twitter can help you a lot of in that way. Other ways of promoting your game can be posting about your game on game development forums and using some web digital distribution services where others will be able to see your game. Some of digital distribution services are: www.kongregate.com, www.gamepix.com, html5games.com, www.addictinggames.com, chrome.google.com/webstore and many others.

After learning this 5 things I finally published my game Adventure Runners. Adventure Runners is endless running game where you draw a road for your player. In this game you will also have to watch for other traps that will be on your way.

Here you can play my game:  Play Adventure Runners


I hope this 5 things will help you if you are planing to build your first HTML5 game.