Mind Cauldron

Development Studio

gamedev

Fungi Garden funding approved!

by

We have just learned that our game application for the WRAP fund has been successful! This means we are now looking at paperwork and figuring out the details.

This is truely a very exciting moment for the team and project!

We are currently waiting on more details, as we may not have been granted the amount we asked for, and there are requirements we must fulfill before we can draw down the funding. This is a big learning curve for us and it has been so worth it – especially now that our futures are so uncertain for us freelancers.

The funding will allow us as a team to begin working more at a steady pace on our first game project together. The game that we want to make. It is a dream come true, and an accomplishment we are making happen with the help of the WRAP fund.

Thank you for your support and for being with us on this journey!

Learn Unity by making a game, livestreamed on Twitch

by

I have been interested in learning Unity for some time though never seem to get around to completing online courses. To finally tackle this personal mission, I have teamed up with two artists from Goat Planet so I can learn Unity by making a game and focus on the technical side of things.

Motivation and accountibility

Running my own business is demanding on my time. When I have to weigh up the decision of spending more time on business projects or online courses, I often go to the business. However, I still want to learn Unity.

As we all know from behavioural economics, humans really suck at making decisions. We must find ways to overcome our shortfalls in decision making. Luckily there are a bunch of tried and trusted approaches to trick yourself into the path you actually want to take. If you are interested, look up nudges, accountibility and get lost in a sea of interesting psychological studies.

One way to keep motivated is to increase accountability. The idea is that if you tell people you are working on something, there is now some social pressure on you to perform. In fact, there are services you can use just for this purpose alone! If you work on the same project as someone else, the accountibility goes up again, since they actually need your work to further the project to completion. This makes sense!

Since following an online course by myself only holds myself accountable, the accountability level is low. I believe the best way to learn is through doing, and I want to increase my accountability for the project, I decided to form a team.

With a team, you have team members and meetings, the levels accountablilty hits the ceiling!

Motivation goes way up too, since it’s actually fun to work with other people on a creative project, and the result will be better than anything you can make alone. But how can I increase accountability even more?

Livestream the development of the game, in the open, on Twitch. Share every mistake and learning moment with the world at large. Oh my god, the pressure! Suddenly I became completely excited about the whole project, and that excitment spread through the team.

Motivation is infectious!

When I started my first stream, a friend of mine tuned into the channel and got super motivated to work on their own game. They made pixel art, a sprite sheet, and a level. As it turns out, seeing your friends working on their passion projects has an infectious motivation aura! Surely there must be some studies out there that show this.

Hearing this news made the whole project a success in a way I didn’t even think could happen. If I can somehow motivate anyone else to work on their own game or to pick up a new skill, that’s an amazing bonus. Still, I remain super excited to continue development and can’t wait til my next stream!

You can can check out the live stream here:

https://twitch.tv/mindcauldrongames

Play the prototype builds here:

https://darrenkearney.itch.io/fungi-garden

You can also read devlog updates on our itch.io game page.