Coding a Game from Start to Finish in 48 Hours

Are you an aspiring game developer, or simply want to see what developing a game is like? Well, thanks to a competition called Ludum Dare, you can see many such examples. You see, the primary rule for the competition is that you build a game from scratch in 48 hours, and for an entry to be valid, the developer must record the entire process with software or a camera.

As a result, sites like YouTube are filled up with all of the different entries, and some are a blast to watch. To think that a decent game could be coded up in just 48 hours is incredible, and even hard to believe sometimes. But from beginning to end, you can see the developer start his or her code, create the graphics, test the game and so forth.

One entry that caught my eye in particular is for the development of a game called Metagun. The developer, Notch, previously won me over with his upcoming title Minecraft, so I had figured his YouTube video would be worth a watch… and sure enough, it was. Even if you are not that interested in game development, seeing the entire process is simply incredible.

In the video, you can see every single aspect being taken care of, including the creation of graphics (with Paint.net), audio, and the seemingly endless code tweaking that needs to be done to assure that bugs didn’t make it into the final game. The fact that the entire game is coded in Java is even more impressive to me, since that’s not a simple language to code.

After you watch the video, be sure to actually play the game here. Just be warned… it’s hard!

This is a timelapse of me making Metagun, a game for Ludum Dare 18. The game was all made within 48 hours (from scratch). If you liked this video, there’s a whole bunch more timelapse videos from people participating in the same competition here.