Bitty Knight - A mini-roguelike game made with Go

Bitty Knight - My 1st game made with Go

Source code is available on GitHub

I have been messing around for about 4-5 years in my spare time (I have a day job) learning Go to use for game development (more about that here) which is not a language generally used to make games. However, Go is easy to learn (in my opinion) and can be typed pretty quickly, meaning that you can get a lot done pretty quickly. Whilst 4-5 years is not quick, bear in mind this is only doing 1-2 hours a day in the evening after work and learning Go from scratch. For my use, Raylib was the best option for displaying the game graphics as it is easy to use and powerful enough for my requirements.

Anyway, after all this time messing around and feeling like I was not really getting anywhere, I have finally made my first game with Go and Raylib and it is freely available so you can download Bitty Knight on Steam if you want to try it out. Just note that it did not take 4-5 years to make Bitty Knight, learning Go and Raylib for game development took 4-5 years, coding Bitty Knight only took about 3 months. The game is short, only 6 levels and I made it free so anyone can play it, as it not a game that is good enough to charge money for. It was completed as more of project to prove to myself that I could make a (very average) game using Go without any real previous game development experience.

What have I learned? Well, that it is much, much more difficult to make a game than you think, unless you have previous coding experience or have lots of time to learn then you really need to make time everyday to sit down and get stuck in. Don’t give up, and try and try again would be phrases that I think would be important to bear in mind. I lost count of how many attempts I made at other game ideas prior to this one, most were overly ambitious, many were much better in concept, however as a solo developer (one guy), setting such massive tasks with no experience always proved too difficult. For this reason, eventually I decided to make something much simpler, although I have the skill to make a much better game, that requires much more time and dedication, though this is planned for the future. Anyway, if you want to play it, download for free Bitty Knight on Steam

Source code is available on GitHub

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