If you are like me, you don't make games you just enjoy them. I love playing video games, every kind of game from the big new FPS to the simple casual Facebook game. Sometimes I think it would be cool to create a video game, my own game. I think its something most gamers have thought about. Just like a bookworm who aspires to be a novelist, gamers want to be developers for games. The question though, how does anyone create a video game? Well – with a game engine of course. That is a program to help create games. There are simpler game engines like Flash or GameSalad, and there are others that are complicated and push technology to the limit like Unreal 4 or the Crytek Engine. Some are as expensive as hundreds of thousands of dollars to use, while others are even completely open source or free. I'm not looking to make the next super blockbuster game like Final Call of Battlefield, Diamond and Crystal 3 or whatever that needs a fancy (and expensive) game engine. I, and hopefully you, just want to make a game to have fun with – and preferably it won't have to cost me that much. So what game engine do we use?

Luckily for me (and the power of Google) I found out that a couple of engines that fit my needs. One in particular was Unity, which is a new name to me. To my surprise a whole list of games have been made with the Unity game development platform. Games like Slenderman, Thomas was alone, Hearthstone, Temple Run 2 and Surgeon Simulator 2013. The biggest surprise to me that it was simple and easy to learn. On the Unity website itself there is a “Learn” page, and it is a resource page with links to their official video tutorials. I learned all the basics to get me started in an hour one night. It was amazing that with so little teaching I could do so much. I had a little capsule thing run around smashing around boxes in my tiny game window – nothing close to a real game but it was something I made. Within the next few days I learned more about Unity, I managed to make a little adventure platform game. The more I created with Unity, the more I discovered how easy it was to learn and master.

A little bit more about me that I should mention now, I'm a high school student. My school doesn't have a game development class or anything to teach a program like Unity. In my opinion, it is a shame because it is an easier program to pick up than something like Photoshop, which is taught at my school. Unity can use 3 different scripting languages at once and can accept imports from a rainbow of programs, it was made to fit in with any system or platform. Even getting resources for your games isn't difficult, because Unity has a built  in asset store with quality free content (with lots of other content if your willing to pay). Included in the store are tutorial content and completed examples, so even if you can't make a battle hardened solider with complete textures and animations – the asset store is there for you.

After a week of learning, coding, and wondering why my game did something strange, I made a few games. Though the games were only tutorial games, and one was from the first night featuring a capsule and boxes, I feel as if I am ready to make my first game. Sure maybe the terrain I make may not be realistic, or the animations I import may be a bit wonky, or my boxes will crash the physics engine – I am ready to make my game, and I now everyone else can too.

Written by: Khan A. Ibrahim
Louise Arbour Secondary School