Find the Gnome – Portfolio

Context

In 2017 I really wanted to get into game development. To get started I decided that I needed to make a game on my own. That would indicate my effectiveness in the diverse set of skills needed, and it would give a nice start to a game-development related portfolio.

Product

The game is a casual PC game where you try to find and catch gnomes. As a variation on the ‘normal’ 2D hide-n-seek this is a 3D take on the hide-n-seek genre.

This game is available on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/810420/Find_the_Gnome/
The official game page is on https://gamefeelings.com/games/find-the-gnome/

It has 17 levels with varying gamemodes.

It uses 4 types of gnome behaviors, 3 objective types and 3 gamemodes to make for a hide-n-seek worthy game-play.

My part

I did almost all of the game development, modelling, animations textures and publishing by myself. See for this my blogs at gamefeelings.com and the vlogs on YouTube.
The game took 550 hours over 7 months, spare time only. From 2017 to 2018.

The hand drawings (store-front, in-game narrator images) are from a hired artist based on concept arts from me.
The music is from a distribution-free music website.

My main goal was to make and finish a game by myself to find out what drives me to create games and what I like when creating games. My findings are condensed in this article.

I do like the coding, workflow and business part of the game development process.
I found out that I am not gifted with graphical art skills or music skills, and if I want to continue building games I have to find a way to get better at it or to find a way so that the lack of skills in these subjects don’t matter that much.

Related stuff

Random order, tooling used

Unity
No marketplace assets used (except for ‘Zenject’, ‘Facepunch.Steamworks’ and some effects from the ‘standard assets’)
Steam and Steamworks
Blender modelling, painting, UV editing and animating
Release for PC, MacOS, Linux (SteamOS)
Marketing/media, publication, vision.
GIT sourcecontrol

Critique

A few gamers have posted an article or video about this game:

And I have a few words on this from my own:

Visually dull, especially the menu and the background. In game the style is better but still lacking effects and good coloring.
Main game mechanic is good and fun. However, the objectives and secondary game mechanics are difficult to understand.
Limited diversity in scenery. Not all promised content is delivered.