Blocksters are ascending and ready to make an impact block by block 🙌

5 min readApr 12, 2023

From Idea to Reality: The Story of Blocksters’ Game Development Journey

The Beginning:

Hi, we are the Blocksters team, our names are Patrick and Samuel. Our journey began on September 13, 2022, on that day we introduced ourselves and brainstormed a game which eventually became ‘Crash!’. We wanted our game to be in 2D and make it so players can do anything they want without any restrictions. We drew inspiration from the games, Terraria and Minecraft which heavily impacted the way we did our enemies and items, and more importantly the mechanics. With the help of Coach Andy we were able to incorporate most of the ideas we wanted. We were able to bring our game to life by using Visual Studios Code, an advanced IDE, and Pygame, a library in Python for game development. To share code with each other we used Github desktop, a popular platform to share code with multiple people. Overall, we’re proud of what we have achieved so far, and we’re excited to continue our journey with “Crash!” as we work towards creating a game that will captivate players with its endless possibilities.

Difficulties with Pygame:

Due to our limited knowledge about Pygame at the time, we struggled a lot at first. But we remained determined and preserved by learning all the functions and syntax. From this we were able to start on our game idea and began creating the player. We used a basic online software called Piskel to design the image for the player. To this day we continue to use Piskel to create images for basically everything in our game. Once we got our image we programmed the player movement and the border, the limits of where the player can go. For our game’s movement we wanted to use WASD controls as opposed to arrow keys. We thought about using arrow keys but we eventually decided not to because WASD controls give players a more immersive experience according to a few articles we looked at. While our experience with pygame was limited when we first started, we learned it step by step and gradually became more comfortable with it. We know as we continue to develop our game, we will face even more challenges that we have to persevere through. We are also always looking for new ways to improve the player experience.

Using tools that boost productivity:

To make our development process more effective and efficient, we used a variety of softwares to help with that. We created a Jamboard to list out our ideas, such as the game lore, enemies, etc. This allowed us to organize and visualize our ideas. Additionally, we used Airtable, a great management tool, to organize and track our tasks. Airtable helped us stay on top of everything. To present our progress and what we did at each class, we used a networking tool called Linkedin. On Linkedin we received advice and encouragement which helped us improve the game and all the encouragement motivated us.

A electrifying journey and experience so far:

All in all, our journey has been challenging but also a rewarding experience. We’ve learned so much about each other and Python in the time our team has been together. Starting from a basic idea and limited knowledge about Pygame, we were able to create an amazing game that we are all very proud of. None of this would’ve happened with the help of Coach Andy and the use of tools such as Airtable, Jamboard, Linkedin, and Piskel. We look forward to continuing to improve our game and sharing a game that is enjoyable with the ACF community. Overall, this experience at ACF has taught us a lot about the importance of teamwork, perseverance, and collaboration.