Welcome to another edition of Developer Diaries! This time, we caught up with Bart Alluyn who has been a key figure in the community for a long time now, having developed tutorials and videos to help people learn Construct. He's also just released his first major game, Runes of Aereal!
Let's start with an introduction
I'm Bart Alluyn, a solo indie game developer living in Belgium. Releasing a decent game someday has always been one the things high on my bucket list. A game I could be proud of, a game worth playing and worth charging money for. I graduated as an ICT developer almost 25 years ago, but in my early career I started on a different path into data analysis and business intelligence. That's still what I'm doing today, but the dream of one day releasing my own game is still very much alive. So I created my own label called “Lessis Games”.
The name originates from “less is more”, one of the creeds I try to live by. My main goal wasn’t, and still isn’t, to become rich by doing game development, rather it’s a journey that’s reflected in the Lessis Games’ slogan: Learn, Create & Inspire. Learning to develop a game, creating it, and inspiring others by doing tutorials, or by doing a dev log.
You can find my dev log for my current project, Runes of Aereal on Youtube, but more on that later.
What made you choose Construct?
Basically, when you're trying to develop a game, there are different paths you can follow. You could learn an existing game engine such as Unity or Godot, or you could program your game in some programming language like C or C#. There are many options out there to try, but most of them have one thing in common: you have to invest a lot of time in getting to know the engine or language before you can start developing your own game.
As a hobby developer, doing game development in your spare time, alone, this is not something you can afford to do if you have the ambition to one day release a game that goes beyond the "hello world" tutorials.
I searched for a long time for an engine that could provide enough functionality and stability combined with a low learning curve. That search stopped when I found Construct 3.
That was years ago actually, when the Construct 3 engine was still its early phase, and Construct 2 engine hadn’t even been deprecated yet. Since then, Scirra has done a tremendous effort to compete in the niche of small-time indie game development. I honestly don’t know why there aren’t more games released using Construct 3 as an engine.
You've created tons of tutorials and resources for the community, how did you get into making those?
The tutorials and resources I created for the community were actually part of my own learning curve.
Back in the day when I started creating them, there were very few example projects. Nowadays there are hundreds displaying many different mechanics, but at that time, Construct 3 gave the impression it was good in creating platformers and not much else. However, I found that wasn't true at all. It already had a great deal of functionality to create any type of game, like puzzle games, card games, procedural generation, multiplayer, etc. So I decided to make it into a challenge for myself to make some popular types of games in Construct 3.
Making those examples had two big advantages.
One: I could learn the engine, and forced myself to go beyond the basics and find out how I could use the functionality to go beyond the simple examples. And secondly, I could sell the templates in the store. Today, years later, they have been sold more than 1500 times, which has given me enough funds to go for a bigger project.
You've just released Runes of Aereal, can you tell us about the game?
Runes of Aereal is a strategy deck builder, much like the popular game Slay the Spire. You roam through the islands of Aereal, searching for the 9 runes of immortality. Along the way you encounter creatures you need to defeat with a card deck you’re building. There are many different types of cards, but also scrolls, which are spells for one-time effects, and artefacts that can influence how the game is played.
You can choose between six different characters, all of which have different traits and skills. Furthermore, you can develop those skills, upgrade your cards, craft scrolls, buy stuff in the shop, etc.
This all helps to make it more interesting and gives a different journey every time you play the game. I've invested more than three years in creating this game. A relatively short period of time for a solo developer given the size of the game, and the number of features it contains. According to me, that's thanks to the rapid development possibilities of Construct 3.
What's been your biggest development hurdle so far?
I’m going to mention two things as my biggest hurdles.
The first thing is... I'm really bad at everything which isn't game logic. Graphics, sounds, animations etc. When I try to do that, I lose a lot of time, and the quality is not what it's supposed to be. Getting past that hurdle took the realisation that I shouldn't be doing everything myself. I used freelancers on Fiverr to create a lot of the content of my game, such as visuals, animations, sound, voice over, etc. Other content has just been generated by AI like Dall-E or Chat GPT. Those new evolutions are gift from heaven for hobby game developers in my opinion.
The second is motivation. When you're doing everything yourself, your motivation is good in the beginning with high hopes and big plans. But life happens as we all know, and a lot of stuff can come between you and your big plans. That's normal I think though.
I found that it's better to do 5 minutes every day than hours and hours concentrated in a short period of time. It keeps things going, and you're never "out of it" so to speak, the game is always in the back of your mind, even if you don't have time to continue. Consistency over motivation.
Do you have any memorable dev stories?
The Runes of Aereal is not the first big project I have attempted in Construct 3.
Previously I attempted to create a hotel simulation game. Much like Prison Architect for example, where you can build your own hotel, with multiple floors, hire personnel, manage guests with different needs, etc.
It was some time ago, when Construct 3 didn't have much of the functionality it has now, so I needed to make a lot of stuff myself, which is now available out of the box. Things like templates, permutation tables, html layers, layer groups, translation, etc.
Though I got pretty far, I had to stop the project as the scope was getting out of hand. I had lost motivation at a certain point, because I realized I had spent months making a feature that needed to be revised totally now I got further in the development.
Turns out I needed more vision and a long-term perspective when starting the project, and a smaller scope to be able to complete something. A valuable lesson to learn, and a mistake I didn’t make again when starting with the Runes of Aereal.
Do you have any advice for people doing their own game projects?
Well, looking back at my journey to completion of my game, there are several tips I can give. The first one is to start small. Choose your game engine wisely and start by creating some smaller projects. I’d also encourage you to go beyond the basics and try to experiment until you have something you like. Learn your engine inside out so that you know its strengths and weaknesses. That way you can also tailor your game a bit more to take advantage of these strengths to get a result faster. For example, for the Runes of Aereal, the entire game internal workings is based on a queue mechanism making full usage of function maps. Knowing this functionality was there, allowed me to tailor my entire game mechanic around it. Take what you can get and exploit it to the fullest.
The second lesson I've learned is not to over scope. Trying to take on the world will have you end up with nothing. Especially if you're doing things alone. Start small, and gradually add more functionality as you go. Get a minimum viable product as fast as possible. It gives you something to showcase, and it helps motivation going. Make it beautiful from the start. Invest in some nice graphics even in the beginning of the game development. It's much more pleasant to work on a game that looks cool, than on some dummy graphics.
Also, don't try to do everything yourself. Don't install gimp or Photoshop, and follow courses in asset creation if that isn't your strong suit. You'll lose a lot of time, and the result will not be what you want. Instead, invest some money in having something created for you. I guarantee it will be worth it.
Consistency is better than motivation. If you create a game for years, you're going to lose motivation. No question about it. But if you remain consistent and do only 5 minutes a day, you don't lose the spirit. Even on holiday, for example, writing down some ideas on your mobile might be something good to keep the game in the back of your head.
Don’t be afraid to throw something away. A great example in the Runes of Aereal is the shop interface. The original interface looked quite different than it is now, but I didn’t like the look and feel of the original design. Even though I had invested weeks into the development of it, in the end, I threw it away. In hindsight, that was a good decision as the interface is much more simple now.
Invest in helper applications. What I mean by that is, certainly if you have a game with a lot of random generation, it’s a good idea to develop some kind of sandbox mode where you can test the functionality. That takes quite some time, but it’s really worth it.
Release with 90% of the game finished. You'll never reach 100%, and the 90% is more than good enough for most of the players out there. Don't try and add that tiny little feature. Don't try to find that specific sound effect that sounds just right. Features and sounds can be added afterwards, and nobody will be hesitant to buy the game just because a button is in the wrong spot, or a small sound effect is missing.
Any final thoughts?
Game development is brutal. It's not a joke. It takes a huge amount of time, effort, money and motivation to get to a product that's worth selling. A testimonial to that is the amount of time and effort I put into marketing with (spoiler alert) not such a great result.
I explain all about it in a video on my dev log:
But in the end, it is so satisfying to finally get there.
Don't get discouraged by bad reviews & the lack of publisher interest. Don't try to be perfect & don't give up on your dream.
I hope to have inspired someone with this dev diary and I wish everyone the best!