4 years ago when I created this GameJolt account, I never even expected to even hit 50 followers, yet here we are today. 1,000 followers. So today, I'd like to tell you my gamedev story.

My gamedev story starts in the year 2008. I've always loved creating things. I spent most of my time in elementary school creating art and books that have since been lost. As a gamer, I decided that I wanted to combine my love of video games and creativity to make my own video games! So I got to work! Sitting in class and drawing my game ideas on printer paper became my favorite thing in the whole world! Seeing how excited all my classmates would get at all these cool ideas I had only fueled the flames even more. They'd give me ideas, come up to me and show me their characters they drew, it was great! Unfortunately, none of these ideas ever became anything. I knew nothing about game development at 8 years old so I aimed to fix that! I spent my free computer time typing stuff into google along the lines of "free game creators" until I stumbled upon a site called Sploder.com

Sploder wasn't really a game development site but more of a level editor. At the time, it was everything I could have ever wished for! So I made an account under the cringy name of "logancookweegee" and got to work on my first project "Space Escape". The game obviously wasn't good, nor was it popular but I was hooked! I made game after game after game. I would even sneak onto the computer in the middle of the night just to make more games .

Moving into middle school, my friend Raster_Entertainment and I started collaborating on our Sploder projects. My 'popularity' on the site was slowly growing. My most popular project on Sploder ended up being one called "Multiplayer mario battle" using the new 'physics' editor on the site. This game amassed a whopping... 215 views! I was ecstatic, but nothing else really came of it. I made a few more games on the site before my friend showed my a new program called Game Maker 8. I said goodbye to my Sploder page and abandoned it in 2012, never to release another game on the site. It was time to move on to bigger and better things.

In October 2012, I created my profile on the yoyogames sandbox site. At the time, we were using our school-issued macbooks to create these games. We would make games for school projects and make the coolest presentations in the room with them. I was using the drag and drop system mostly while my friend started to learn game maker language (GML). We weren't able to upload .app/.exe files directly because we were using the trial version of Game Maker 8. So to make our projects playable for people, we needed to upload the .gmk files to the sandbox. That pretty much means that we were giving people our projects, and having them play it by clicking the playtest button in the editor. Unsurprisingly, nobody stole our terrible code or assets. The only documented photos of my projects on the site are right here.

I spent the rest of my middle school years learning basic GML from my friend. Honestly, the only reason I even know how to program is because of him. But anyways, middle school was all experimental projects. No real games were released during these 3 years. Let's fast forward to 2015, when we decided that we would get serious about game development.

It's now my sophomore year of high school. All the years in between now and middle school was spent learning more and more about programming. Every gamedev knows the cycle. Get new idea > work on idea > get bored > repeat. One late summer night, I decide to show my friend a game I've been working on over skype. This game was very simple. Bowling balls fall from the sky and you play as a circular man on a skateboard named Itami. He looks exactly like this and honestly I was surprised the first time I saw that emoji XD. After getting some help with some of the coding and voice acting from my friend, the game was fittingly titled "Bowling Ball Dodge". This was officially my first completed game! After years and years of abandoning projects, we had finally released a full game, albeit a short one.

I spent the rest of the summer experimenting in a new engine called RPG Maker MV and creating a game that got greenlit on Steam but failed terribly. Another unfinished game but due to technical issues this time. But after this game, we both once again fell into a slump and kept abandoning projects before they were ever announced. My game development journey up to this point was nothing to be proud of really. No fame, no publicity, failures and disappointment. This was all about to change...

The year is now 2018. I'm 5 days away from graduating high school and was spending the following few days bored out of my mind, creating projects and learning more and more once again. My friend, who had pretty much mastered GML was showing me a first-person project he was working on. I sent him a spooky sprite I made and wanted to see what it would look like in-game. The results were terrifying. Cutting through the fog, a pair of white eyes stare into the player, following your every move. We made it move. It was scarier. We added noise when it got close. It was scarier. Eventually, we had a game! A first-person, horror, maze game that we called Consternation. We stayed up all night working on the project, laughing, screaming, and stressing over this new project and all it's quirks. Sleep-deprived, I notice a dark blue light coming from my window. I look up from my screen and see that the sun is rising. We wrap up the level, create the GameJolt and Itchio page and upload the project. I close my tabs and tell my friend that it was fun, but I needed to get some sleep. We close the call, and I put my laptop away.

As soon as my head hits my pillow, I hear a 'ding' from my phone indicating that I got a Facebook message. Usually, when I get a Facebook message, it's from family and important so I roll over, letting out a sigh, hoping that I don't need to go anywhere. But it's a message from Paypal! Someone donated $2 to the game! My first game sale! I messaged Raster and told him what happened, sent him 50% of it and even though I was excited, I was still exhausted so I fell asleep.

The game was starting to gain some traction. Naturally, we decided to keep expanding the project into a bigger game, spending the next few weeks adding new levels, monsters, sounds, etc. But the game was finally complete. We got comments, videos, and donations. Stuff we've never had for previous projects. Our first taste of having a community, something we've been wanting since elementary school. Our vision was finally becoming a reality! Time to work on a new project. A new first for us. A sequel...

The development of Consternation 2 started soon after Consternation was fully completed. This one had to be bigger and better than it's predecessor. I used the same code from Consternation 1 for cameras and movement but added sprinting, crouching, shaders, and flashlights with the help of Raster of course. Most of the framework was made by Raster_Entertainment but the rest of the project was made by me. I was responsible for all but the essential code like cameras, player movement, and pathfinding. The hype was starting to build around this project. Our small community was ready to see what we had to offer. Little did we know how much this would change our lives.

Consternation 2 released on August 9, 2018. For months, I updated the game including more and more content until it was finally complete. The game gained a little more traction than the first game in the series so we were still excited about this release! More people were donating, more people were playing, and more people were recording Let's Play videos on it! The game started to level out for a few months and a clear downward trend was starting to form. It looked like the game was finally done with and we were ready to move on to the next project.

Months later, I was contacted by a GameJolt rep saying that they'd like to feature Consternation 2 on the front page! I agreed, sent them all the required info, and I waited. One day at work, I checked my emails and found thousands of emails saying "You got a new follower" and "[NAME] has followed Consternation II". I was shocked! I knew getting featured was a big deal but I never expected the game to blow up as much as it was now! I messaged Raster_Entertainment with this. "We finally made it."

The game continued to grow more and more and more over the next few months. With each devlog I made, the game would spike right back to the front page and net more players.

But suddenly, something incredible happened...

I was at work one day and felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I pull it out and take a peek at my screen. A notification from PayPal. "You have recieved $20 from Markiplier". My first reaction was disbelief. I'm pretty sure I chuckled and mumbled "Hah hah nice one dude." thinking someone just set their name to Markiplier to mess with people. Then I checked the email address linked to it. Seems legit. The curiosity was killing me, I had to find out if I was just getting pranked or not. I told my co-workers I was going on break and clocked out. I met one of my work friends at the door and told him what happened and said I'd report back after break. I open the YouTube app and type in Markiplier. What I saw, blew my mind. Markiplier actually played our game on his channel. It wasn't in a "3 random horror games" video either. It was a 40-minute long video dedicated to our game!

The video gained hundreds of thousands of views within the next few hours. I was interacting with people in the comments, clearing up some confusion, and just having fun. I grew up watching Markiplier videos, we all did. If I went back in time and told my past self that our game got played by Markiplier, I would have never believed it. It will forever be one of my greatest achievements.

Following the success of Consternation 2, I created a Kickstarter page for my new project dubbed Carrier Trail. I set a modest goal of $800 and managed to break the goal in a few weeks! In fact, the Kickstarter ended with $3,889! There was a clear interest in this project. At this time, the game is nearing completion and it might just be the next big hit for me! Only time will tell!

I want this message to be a reminder to everyone that success doesn't come overnight. It takes failure, sacrifice, time, effort, determination, and friends that will always have your back. You WILL succeed if you keep at it! I encourage you all to NEVER give up on your dreams. If some small-town idiot like me can do it, I guarantee you can too!

I know this message feels like something you'd read for a 1 million follower post but hey, it is what it is. I never imagined I'd even get this far and I appreciate the heck out of each and every single one of you! You're all incredible and it means the world to me that you've given me a follow. It really does.

Cheers to 1,000! Let's aim for 1,000 more! 🥂

Thank you for your support!
-Logan (CrackedGhostGames)