I recently downloaded the free version of unity and was looking around the engine as well as over some of the tutorials and was wondering if anyone had any pointers that I, as a beginner, that I should keep in mind when I am building my first game.

For this first game I'm looking at trying to make some simple along the lines of the player needing to collect a certain number of gems/coins in a maze to move on to the next room as it gets further into the game there are different color gems/coins that are worth different amounts, giving the player multiple solutions to these levels. Or they will all be worth the same amount and the player will have to get a certain number of each required color to proceed. Each level will have a door that will be "locked" until the right number of gems is gathered in the room.

I hope my question and game idea are clear. If not, I'll clarify as best as I can.

Your goal seems small enough, I think you'll need to proceed further and just go with it, and as you get stuck on something specific, come back and post the specific problem.

Only tip I can give you right out of the gate, is try to be consistent with your Project folder in Unity, it's kind of a pain to have to reconfigure it.

From my own experience, going through as many of the tutorials (I assume you are going through the same ones at https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials ?) as you can is the best thing to do as a beginner. While Unity is often recommended as an engine for beginners, it is still quite a complex piece of machinery and requires a lot of learning of various parts to know how to put together a complete game. If you've never done programming before, then the C# scripting parts might seem a bit daunting.

However, once you've done 2 or 3 tutorials, even on widely different games, you will see the same concepts coming up again and again. Then once you've reached that stage you'll be able to easily apply those concepts to your game. In particular, there's one tutorial, the 2d rouge-like tutorial, that will come in very handy when you're ready to write your game and I'm sure you can apply/copy a lot of that. I know that seems like pretty basic advice, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people (myself included) who do one or two very basic tutorials and feel that's enough and dive into the deep end when there's plenty more to learn.

From my own experience, going through as many of the tutorials (I assume you are going through the same ones at https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials ?) as you can is the best thing to do as a beginner. While Unity is often recommended as an engine for beginners, it is still quite a complex piece of machinery and requires a lot of learning of various parts to know how to put together a complete game. If you've never done programming before, then the C# scripting parts might seem a bit daunting.

However, once you've done 2 or 3 tutorials, even on widely different games, you will see the same concepts coming up again and again. Then once you've reached that stage you'll be able to easily apply those concepts to your game. In particular, there's one tutorial, the 2d rouge-like tutorial, that will come in very handy when you're ready to write your game and I'm sure you can apply/copy a lot of that. I know that seems like pretty basic advice, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people (myself included) who do one or two very basic tutorials and feel that's enough and dive into the deep end when there's plenty more to learn.

Thanks for the information! I already know I'm the type to dive in head first without testing the waters since I want to get right to work. However, the C# scripting shouldn't be too daunting as I have some experience with C++ and from what I have seen of C# it seems to be pretty similar to a point.

Your goal seems small enough, I think you'll need to proceed further and just go with it, and as you get stuck on something specific, come back and post the specific problem.

Only tip I can give you right out of the gate, is try to be consistent with your Project folder in Unity, it's kind of a pain to have to reconfigure it.

Thank you for the tip :) I will certainly keep that in mind.