TL;DR
- Clicker Hacker is on hold: the prototype was boring.
- My new project is MyFirstGame, a card-based decision game in the style of Reigns, made in Godot.
- You get one year to finish your first game without running out of morale.
- It won’t come out in 2026. Next up is a playable micro-demo on the web.
Yet another project, but this time I want to release it
Exactly one year ago I wrote that my first game would be Clicker Hacker. My personal goal was to release it at some point this year, and I’ll tell you right away: I probably won’t make it.
The main reason is that Clicker Hacker didn’t convince me at all once I finally had a first playable prototype: it was simply very boring. I haven’t abandoned the idea, but I haven’t given it a single thought in a while. Maybe that will change someday.
Faced with that, I went back to thinking about what game I could make in a relatively short time, and I came up with a reigns-like, a genre I personally really enjoy.
Will I manage to release it in 2026? I don’t think so; at most, a playable beta for friends and acquaintances. If I pushed hard, maybe, but I’d rather work on the project only when I really feel like it, not add things just for the sake of making progress.
Besides… GTA VI is coming out and I plan to play it a lot xD.
P.S.: If it were only that game… But add the whole September and October release train, the new Football Manager, Zelda, getting back into Magic… There’s just not enough time for everything!
What is MyFirstGame?
MyFirstGame is a Reigns-style decision game where you play a rookie indie developer. Your goal: finish your first game before the year ends without losing your mind along the way.
In case you don’t know Reigns: each turn a card shows up with a situation and you choose between two answers. Every choice moves your resources, and if one gets out of control, the run is over.
In MyFirstGame you manage four: progress, morale, money and time. The run starts on January 1 and every decision brings you closer to the December 31 deadline. If you reach 100% progress before that date without losing your morale, you win.
And the game isn’t the only thing that matters: family, work, free time and collaborators all compete for your time, just like in real life.
The idea is for it to be highly replayable: there will be lots of cards and in each run you’ll only see a small part of them. There will be quests and situations that only appear after a specific answer, others that depend on the date, and many more variables like that.
Want to get a feel for it… you can’t yet, but I’ll soon upload a mini-demo to this website for exactly that.
Why a game inspired by Reigns?
Actually, my main inspiration isn’t Reigns but a very little-known game called Unicorn Startup Simulator. Until recently you could play it on Toggl’s website, but they took it down; you can still try it on the Internet Archive.
There are a few reasons that led me to this genre:
- I really like it.
- It’s doable for a solo dev.
- Unicorn Startup Simulator was the first game that came to mind when the prototype of my previous project didn’t work out.
Will my game be a copy? That’s definitely not my intention; I just see it as a source of inspiration.
It will have a lot in common with them, since it shares the genre, but I also have several mechanics planned that aren’t in those games and that came up organically while I was working on the project, which, at least for me, is how it should be at every level.
My real goal: finish and release a video game
Unlike most people who release games commercially, my goal isn’t to make money from it. There’s nothing wrong with that, but luckily I don’t need to.
Video games have always been my passion, but life kept getting in the way and I always put off getting serious about a project. I’ve tinkered with engines many times and made a few things, but it never went beyond that.
Now I want to give it a real shot, at least in what that means to me, and that means, at the very least, releasing a game.
And yes, that’s exactly what the game is about. It’s no coincidence: deep down, MyFirstGame is my own attempt at making my first game, turned into cards.
Current status and next steps
Right now I have a prototype in Godot that’s playable from start to finish, with completely placeholder art, no sound, and a glorious 0% polish.
I’m focused on designing the cards at a conceptual level. I’m writing them in a flexible documentation format that will later need a small adaptation step to get into Godot.
Why like this? Because some mechanics are still open to change and lots of exceptions keep coming up organically while I create them. I’d rather keep growing the number of cards without being limited by any game mechanic, and adapt everything later.
My plan is to release the game on PC (itch.io and Steam), web and mobile at the same time. But the most tangible next step I have in mind is building a micro-demo, a really small one, to host on the website so I can show something real as soon as possible.
Follow the development of MyFirstGame
All the information about the game is on the project page. If you want to know when the micro-demo is out, subscribe to the newsletter: I’ll share progress, changes of plan and also what goes wrong.