How my first game became my second and why that's okay

Being a game developer was an idle dream until two years ago. Working and living as an artist, I was truly happy with my life. Then it turned out that making games was a lot easier than I had thought, and I dove in at the deep end.

My very, very first game design... was this game. Not my first idea, of course. Ideas are easy to have.

The Moon my Destination is a vertical endless runner; the kind of game that is among the easiest to make as a beginner dev.

I started working on it a mere two weeks after my first game jam, where I had provided art, not any design, let alone code. I used an engine I had never heard of, with a language I barely knew existed — not that it mattered much when I could not yet code anyway — and a small community.

Not gonna lie: I was often very frustrated with my progress. Back then, I could not even write a function or loop that would not immediately break. Basic programming concepts all made perfect sense once I learned them, but I did have to learn them first. It became clear that while I was 100% sure this was an easy-to-make game — which it was, in the end — I simply did not have the skills yet.

So I turned to making games with the skills I did have. Text adventures, visual novels, slowly inching forward and gaining enough programming knowledge to come back to it. Every now and then, I would do a little something for TMMD. I would open the project, type a few lines, find a new problem I could not handle, and leave to make another few jam games.

By the end of 2025, finally, I felt ready to make my first — well, not big, but big enough — game to migrate to Steam. Like a “real dev”. And I told myself I would finish The Moon my Destination first. By then it was already mostly complete, lacking polish and broader testing, but it was playable alright.

As I considered marketing strategies, I found a Steam-themed sale for hidden object games. I had one of those! It just needed polish and more content. And off I went, spending the next three months doing that game, which became A Thousand Bees. And TMMD was benched, again.

When A Thousand Bees was done, and after the mandatory two days off to catch my breath, TMMD was looking at me eagerly: “Now surely you will finish me, too?”

The Moon my Destination had been planned deliberately as the least amount of work that could still count as a full game. As my first full release, it was supposed to be something I could actually finish. Something I would not spend too much time on. Beginner-friendly. So even if it all went wrong, it would be okay.

And then I had already finished one game! TMMD was no longer the first, but the second. And it felt... small.

Players could run. That was the point: a relaxed, almost meditative game. Verging on brainrot. And still, it could do with a little something. I came up with a colouring game mode. Implementing it took almost as much code work as the entire rest of the game.

Yet now, with actual skills — not to toot my own horn, because there is still plenty to learn — I finished an entire extra game mode, finalised the self-made soundtrack, and animated the main character in two weeks.

This long-winded story is why I will always love The Moon my Destination. Its mooncalf climbing a giant flower to reach the moon will always be special to me.

This one is for me. You are very welcome to tag along. It’s gonna be fun!Steam post image