Indie game development with Gdevelop

Abstract

The objective of this thesis was to explore the modern process of solo developing an indie game as a generalist without knowing any scripting language. Alongside this study, a video game prototype was developed with the game engine GDevelop to underline the potential and the limitations of visual coding platforms.

Common video game mechanics and concepts such as character controls, collision detection, and a user interface were studied and implemented in the prototype, which were later iterated into more complex, custom systems to achieve the initial design goals.

The thesis was done from a productional perspective, analyzing the indie game industry as a whole and also in a tandem with the development project: defining scope, assessing market niche, establishing a design pipeline, and finally developing and playtesting a functional game prototype.

The results of playtesting and the analysis of the project indicate that the requirements for game development have changed as game engines have become more accessible. This allows for a more streamlined approach for generalists to start learning game development without the prior entry barrier of scripting languages.