Good day,

So I have been thinking of making a game these days and I decided to go with the plan and actually make one.
Of course, I have 0 experience if it comes to making games. If I'm looking at a blank Unity/Unreal Engine project I simply don't know how to start. Spending hours looking at tutorials is an option, but at the end you still can't do it by yourself and have to look up the same tutorial to see how it's done again. It's also unbelievable for me to see that those people can make a whole game out of scratch.

I searched on what to do if you want to make a new game from scratch, with the most sites saying that you need a concept, which I already have. And then most of the sites tell you that building the game is the second step.
Now my first question is where do you start when building your game? Is it the landscape, the mechanics that are crucial in your sort of game or the other millions of ways you can start?

My second question is whether I use Unity or Unreal Engine. I know there are millions of posts already going about this. But the answers are very mixed. First of all, I have to say that I have 0 scripting/programming knowledge. So I thought that those blueprints Unreal Engine had would be easy, but it turns out it isn't really. I think the graphics should be a bit important in my game and I want it to be 3D as well with 2D minigames in it. Sound and vision is also going to be an important aspect of the game.
I hope that this description can maybe tell what engine suits me more.

My third and last question is where I can find the 'good' tutorials. I need someone to tell me what I need to do, because there is no chance that I can magically find out something without an tutorial. Do I search a tutorial of all basics or do I look for tutorials that only explain a part of the software?

Thanks for the help, I had this idea of making a game for a long time now and this time I really want to go on with it, but there are just lots of things that make it hard.

First, have you read this? It touches on many of your questions.

lowbasil said:
Now my first question is where do you start when building your game? Is it the landscape, the mechanics that are crucial in your sort of game or the other millions of ways you can start?

Often prototyping and concepts. Paper cutouts are easy and cheap. Talking about the rules and mechanics and writing them in notebooks helps you explore ideas both alone and with others and doesn't require any code or artwork.

After you've got a concept that works well with paper parts, building the simplest game mechanics to experiment on them and prove them out. Often that means using an existing engine or modding an existing game. You should probably end up throwing away the prototype, but building the version you will be throwing away will teach you a lot about what is essential and what really isn't.

lowbasil said:
My second question is whether I use Unity or Unreal Engine. I know there are millions of posts already going about this. But the answers are very mixed.

Download them both. Try them out. Decide which you prefer. Both are good.

lowbasil said:
My third and last question is where I can find the 'good' tutorials. I need someone to tell me what I need to do

This one is always difficult. You can find tutorials for specific items, but overall you are building something new that has never existed before. There are no tutorials for doing it, you're exploring the uncharted territory and creating where there was nothing.

If you are looking for a specific task, like how do I manipulate a specific type of asset, how do I load a sound file, those are plentiful. But that's about the extent of tutorials. When you truly venture into the wild there are no guides.

lowbasil said:

Spending hours looking at tutorials is an option, but at the end you still can't do it by yourself and have to look up the same tutorial to see how it's done again. It's also unbelievable for me to see that those people can make a whole game out of scratch.

That's an all-or-nothing mindset that will not serve you well in life. Other people don't make whole games from scratch. They take parts of old projects + tutorials + documentation and then piece it all together like a puzzle. It's a very iterative process where you improve over years, not a situation where you create something very complex from the get-go.

lowbasil said:

My second question is whether I use Unity or Unreal Engine. I know there are millions of posts already going about this. But the answers are very mixed. First of all, I have to say that I have 0 scripting/programming knowledge. So I thought that those blueprints Unreal Engine had would be easy, but it turns out it isn't really. I think the graphics should be a bit important in my game and I want it to be 3D as well with 2D minigames in it. Sound and vision is also going to be an important aspect of the game.
I hope that this description can maybe tell what engine suits me more.

My third and last question is where I can find the 'good' tutorials. I need someone to tell me what I need to do, because there is no chance that I can magically find out something without an tutorial. Do I search a tutorial of all basics or do I look for tutorials that only explain a part of the software?

Unity is the right fit for you because the amount of tutorials for it is maybe and order of magnitude larger than for Unreal Engine. UE will instead require you to look more at documentation (as well as the engine source) and piece things together on your own.

One way you could start is by taking a Udemy course or a tutorial series on Youtube (although most will Unity Youtube tutorials are made by people who have little understanding of programming and the underlying systems). The other way would be to just jump into development and learn things as you go. But realistically for most people that would lead to more frustration than it's worth since almost everything you see will be something that you haven't seen before and your brain would be overwhelmed by all the new information. That said, many people seem to get bored from watching tutorials and taking courses so you should ideally try both approaches and see what works for you.

lowbasil said:
It's also unbelievable for me to see that those people can make a whole game out of scratch.

Much as with others, I doubt that they often do make a whole game out of scratch.

Remember: A tutorial will, I daresay, generally not show the process that its creator went through to make the game, but rather the steps that another might take to make the game.

Those steps might have been discovered through a great deal of learning, experimentation, iteration, and re-use--but none of that is the topic of the tutorial, and so it's omitted.

• Write down all your game details in a Game design document1st.
• Have an honest look at your skills and abilities so you know what you can do and what you can't
• Recruit people to do what you can't