How Tinderbox was made

Deadlines. Probably the biggest issue creators face, deadlines dominate minds and strain entire teams. They can also be the catalyst for creation in the first place.

Hi! I'm Steve. I'm the guy who made this game, and I did it in less than a month. Why? How? We'll get there shortly. At the time of writing this, I'm going to college for Engineering. It's a solid profession. However, I also enjoy making games. I took a class called 3D environmental Modeling for a term, since I wanted to learn more skills in that area. For the final, which was optional, the only guidance given by the professor was to "impress him". Wow, what a load of crap! That tells me nothing!

Anyways, I was on Thanksgiving break, and since I had left my tower computer up at school, I was just tooling around with ideas on my laptop when the idea suddenly hit me, shortly after watching this video.

I liked the video. I liked the idea of making a horror game. In fact, Coulomb, the first game I made (And am still technically making, though it's kind of on hiatus for a bit) was originally going to be a horror game with puzzles. The story would have been about being in an abandoned mall with stores that shifted locations and puzzles relating to mechanics that would change attributes based on light. (For instance, stuff moves in the dark, you turn on the lights to make it be still in the right position in its cycle of movements) That idea was shelved after I figured out that such a mechanic would be incredibly difficult to do, especially considering I knew little about UE4 at the time and lighting was harder than I had thought. So I made Coulomb instead. But I've always still wanted to try my hand at horror.

So I thought yeah, let's try making a horror game for a scenario in one of my universes. For the next month, I spent over 10 hours on average a day working on the project. I isolated myself from friends and paused to sleep and go to class, but little else. I did maintain myseld somewhat, but let's say I skipped studying, showering, and a few other essentials more often than not. I don't think I've ever worked so hard with such consistency on anything in my life. It quickly became less about winning the professor's approval and more for myself, as a personal challenge.

With that being said, it was hard as hell. It's still incredibly unpolished and so much was left out due to time constraints (A month is not a lot of time when you still have to go to classes and are working alone, plus the computer constantly slowed to a halt because I had 4 programs running on it at all times) and the fact I switched over to UE5 midway through development (Which in retrospect, was a terrible idea. Apparently my computer HATES UE5. UE4 rarely gave me issues, so it was sorta surprising to say the least.)

Is it scary? Eh. Not really. Not to me. I honestly put next to no time into sound design and the (nonexistant) jumpscares (Listen, I had forgotten to add an ending until the last day, so there were more important things!) It taught me a lot about pacing, how working on a team might be so much better, how deadlines affect me, what I can do, and so much more. It also made me realize that I don't want to minor in game design. Maybe it's not necessary for me to do, considering I could do this already with the knowledge I had and could readily find online. 

So, yeah. Maybe soon I'll make a video saying mostly the same things, maybe I won't. This project was meant to be short, and not a continuous improvement thing into the future. So, all in all, I think I did pretty well considering that I learned and made a lot, even if it isn't the best or most entertaining game by a long shot. 

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by!

-Steve