During a summer break one goal I focused on was learning the fundamentals of game design and development using the Unity engine. The goal was to gain hands-on experience with Unity’s component-based architecture, scene management, and real-time interaction by developing a small playable games. Through this project, I explored how game objects, physics, and scripting work together to create an interactive experience, while becoming familiar with the Unity editor and workflow.
I first started my learning by looking at YouTube tutorials to learn basic components of game design such as player controls, collision, and basic game logic. Through these tutorials I was able to recreate old games such as “Flappy Bird”, Tic Tac Toe, etc. from scratch and overall get practice in Unity. Furthermore, I learned how event-driven programming and component-based design are applied in a modern game engine and gained experience debugging code and improving features through testing. The project also strengthened my ability to break a large learning goal into smaller, manageable tasks and demonstrated the importance of experimentation and iteration when learning new things. I still have much to learn about game design and hope to learn 3D game design some time in the future.