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Challenge: Can I Make a Web-based Game In One Week?

*** UPDATE***


After just one week I made a small one-level web-based game, using javascript, CSS and HTML. It’s not super sophisticated but it proved that it can be done with very little web programming experience and knowledge.

This challenge has been so fun and I recommend anyone to try and make a web-based fame. I hope you have fun playing the imaginatively titled Desert Man.

*** CHECK OUT THE FINISHED GAME HERE!!! ***

So I am not an experienced coder, web developer, or games developer. For the last couple of months, I have dabbled in a bit of coding, picking up bits of HTML, CSS, and Javascript – mostly through YouTube tutorials.

I started doing it because it was fun! I had hoped that one day it would lead to me making a simple game of my own.

So with very little experience, I wanted to see if can make a web-based game in just one week?

Photo by Hello Lightbulb on Unsplash

Background – Why I am Doing This Challenge

Before I jump into the details I want to address the 2 important reasons why I have set this challenge. (feel free to skip over this if you just want to know the challenge details. )

1: Taking my own advice.

At the beginning of February, I wrote a post entitled: When You Feel Like Giving Up, Challenge Yourself!

In it, I suggest that one way of overcoming a plateau in our projects is to set ourselves a challenge and announce it publicly. This helped me overcome a problem I had with uploading blog posts and making YouTube content.

It’s all too easy to give advice to others and never take our own medicine -I am no different!
The internet is full of people giving unsolicited advice, offering up solutions to all of our life’s problems – big and small. After all most of us use the internet as a question-answering machine.

So it’s time to put my own advice to the test.

2: The Illusion of Progress

Like I said at the beginning of the post, I have been dabbling in web coding in the hope that I could make some kind of game. Every couple of days I would pick up my laptop, work through a few tutorials and try to learn something new. Somedays I would just play around build random components of a website or game using TextEdit and a browser.

It was really fun. And It felt like I was making progress.

But that’s the problem!
How do I know If I was actually making progress? Was I any closer to building even a basic game of my own?

At first this kind of fun, explorative learning was necessary. I had no idea where to start or what I had to do. So I was trying to poke around and learn enough about the subject to see if making a game was even feasible.

During that time I picked up some valuable information:

  • I learned what languages webpages were coded in – HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
  • Some useful tools- VSCode and its Extensions.
  • Online Learning Resources – Youtube channel, W3 schools, and Codecademy.

With every tutorial completed, I felt like I was getting better and better. But it’s all too easy to get stuck in this explorative stage because it’s easy and familiar. Worst of all, it gives us the illusion that we are making progress. If we are not careful, the fun and excitement will wear off and we could be left wondering what we actually achieved.

One Solution – Set a Challenge Testing your progress

Much like a video game, your progress is measured by how much closer you are to achieving your objective. For me, that somewhat loose objective was to make a game.

So the only way I can evaluate my progress is to see whether I can actually build a game. If not, then this challenge should reveal my weak areas. I can then focus on those areas and try again.

This is why tests and exams are so important. As much as we may hate them, if done correctly, they can provide us with valuable feedback to direct our learning. If we didn’t have a feedback mechanism then we could end wasting a lot of time learning things that get us no closer to completing our objective.

The Challenge: Build a Web Game in a Week

  • To design and build a basic web game using HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
  • It must take user input and have a win objective.
  • It must require some user skill/difficulty in order to be fun.
  • Timeframe – Friday 22nd – Thursday 28th. ( 7 days)

If you are interested in following along I will post some updates on here and on my YouTube Channel.

Thanks.

D.

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Why Do We Make Things Harder For Ourselves?

I was inspired to write this post because of a story I read in Ali Abdaal’s newsletter that really resonated with me. 

Recently I have really struggling to post on this blog and upload to my Youtube channel. I have several half-written posts, pages of research and video footage just waiting to be edited. But I can’t seem to get it over the finish line. 


When I think about why this is the case,  I keep coming up with the same kinds of answers. “I need to do better research; I need to make a better workflow; I need to focus on improving my writing; I need to script my videos.. etc etc. 


Whilst these seem like legitimate reasons – indeed I don’t doubt they could improve my content – they are really just excuses. The things I tell myself so I can avoid the judgement of others.  


It’s like I actively make it harder than it needs to be so I have an excuse not to do it! 


In Ali’s newsletter, he calls this Heavy Lift Syndrome. It’s when you treat something as a much heavier lift than it needs to be – like treating lifting 20kg like its 100kg. He suggests the reason is that we have made it into a “Big Deal”.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

 -Confucius.


This is definitely the case for me. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, by creating rules around my videos and blogs posts. Rules like – It has to provide value, it has to be well researched and written. And that classic – it has to be good.

In fact, I think it’s a good rule of thumb that if you are creating strict rules around the stuff you want to do, then perhaps you are making it into a ‘Big deal’ and you may fall foul of ‘Heavy Lift syndrome’. 

Ali’s suggests using a Tim Ferris’ Trick and ask ourselves :

“what would this look like if it were easy?” 

I would also follow up by asking: 

“how would I feel if this was done?“

I find linking these two questions to be very powerful. As I come to write to the final part of this post, it is that ‘feeling’ that is keeping me going to the finish line

So what have you been making something harder than it needs to be?

Thanks for reading 🙂

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