This is a guest post by Michel Soares Tartas, a talented indie game developer and my student. He is starting his career as a game developer and decided to join 1GAM. He just released his very first game. Those are his thoughts and advices about 1GAM.

One Game a Month!

What is this “One Game a Month” thing?
It’s literally what the name says: “One game a Month”. It is a challenge to develop one game every month.

So am I allowed to make any game? Even one with a square jumping?
Yes! You can make any game you want, but the idea of the project is that you challenge yourself, because the more you push, the more you learn. If you want to spend 30 days to make a square jumping, ok, do it, but obviously you will learn less than the guy that decided to make a Super Mario Bros clone.

So can I make a Crysis clone?
Calm down! I know I said ANY game, but let’s not exaggerate. Games like Crysis demand a LOT of technology and a LOT of money to be developed, as well skilled professionals and months or even years of planning…

Ok, I got it, but why should I join this “One Game a Month”?
When you set a deadline to start and finish projects, you automatically become more professional, you tend to behave as you were part of a company. It pushes and guides you to accomplish a goal, meeting the deadline.

Right, but what have you learned so far?
I’ve learned ActionScript 3, Flixel, image manipulation using GIMP, music manipulation in Audacity, strengthened my concepts of object-oriented programming, among other things… And all that happened during my very first month of OneGameAMonth! =D

Cool! However you said you worked on a game, so where is it? Where?!
You can play the game here. It has some bugs, as I could not finish it completely =/ Move the ship using ASDW (or arrow keys), shoot using O or Q, fire special using SPACE key.