Xenoparrot Puzzles is now released here on itch.io and Google Play! Go ahead and give it a try! It's available on Windows and Android, completely free with no ads or IAP.

In Xenoparrot Puzzles you play as a wandering space parrot solving puzzles across colorful worlds while searching for food to survive. As you solve puzzles you unlock new pages of the game's prologue which tells the story of the main character.

The rest of this development log is just to give my perspective on this accomplishment and leave a record for the future.

------

After 3 years of development as a side project I've released my first game. It's not perfect, as it is my first game, but I'm very satisfied to have made a complete game. And along the way I learned everything I now know about game development.

I really like Xenoparrot Puzzles. It has a great art style, an interesting take on puzzle design, and it has a neat little story. Amazingly it meets all of my criteria for a game worth making, despite the fact that I developed the game before I even came up with the criteria. By making this game I learned quite a lot about myself and my taste in games. I've played more video games in the last 3 years than ever before. Perhaps it's only in the most minimal and literal sense of the term, but thanks to developing this game I'm now finally a game developer.

Even so, it's just the beginning. Xenoparrot Puzzles was never imagined to be my magnum opus. It wasn't some dream game or ultimate expression of art. It was just a videogame I wanted to exist. It now exists. Now I can move on to new challenges in the future.

------

After 3 years of learning about game development while making this game I've only begun to recognize how little I know. I need to learn so much more to master the skills of game design and programming, let alone shaders, animation, music, sfx, and writing. Over these years my desire to make games has only grown, while my skills have not grown sufficiently to meet the desire.

My past goal was to become a game developer, which I measured by whether or not I had released a complete game. My new goal is to become a skilled game developer, which I'll measure by the quality of the games I make.

So my future plans are to push myself to learn more, build more skills, and make better games. That ultimately means working on more projects outside of my comfort zone.

------

In conclusion, this is an important step for me. It was a long and hard task, but very gratifying. If you read this far, I hope you also take the time to give the game a try. And let me know what you think so I can improve!

Thanks for reading!

Xenoparrot Puzzles is out now! Go play it!