Right after I became a (professional) game developer, I noticed some strange thoughts in my head while I was playing any game. Instead of simply enjoying the game, I keep on thinking how something was done. “Did they use a graph to control the movement of that monster?” or “How many states does this FSM have?” are some of the questions that pop up.

Sometimes I see a great game, full of cool features and breath-taking art, and I wonder that it could only be made by an army of developers. Later on while reading the credits I discover that a single person made all that! He used free assets/sfx, a lot of passion and dedication. It inspires me to see a great game made by a small team, or a single person, it’s like a reminder saying “See? You could do that too, it’s not impossible!”.

Thinking about that, the how things are made and that it is possible to make them, I’m kicking off a new series of posts called Game Dissection. This series aim to motivate and enlight game developers by showing how a game was made. I will try to reach as many developers as I can, asking for development info, such as game engine, IDE, techniques, mechanics and so on.

I hope this series will help game developers realize that a great game can be made under hard circumstances, such as when you don’t have an art team or have a very low (or non-existent) budget. If you know of a game made by an “approachable” developer, just let me know! It can be my next game dissection subject.

In order to illustrate the dissections, I will use the awesome art by Mads Peitersen (http://madspeitersen.com/). He gently allowed me to use his images in the series and I’m extremely thankful for that. Thanks, Mads!

Let the dissections begin! Stay tuned!