Scurry: Post 1 - Why Scurry!?
If you've seen my previous post on a simple but immersive 3D Pac-Man game then you've already seen the inspiration for Scurry!
3D Pac-Man was only a fun experiment with my kids, but they loved it! It turned out that Pac-Man in first-person perspective is darn scary !
Needs must
In October 2025 I decided to take the plunge and go full-time as a video-game developer.
I had some familiarity already with Unity, Blender etc from my amateur-hour endeavours and experiments discussed in previous posts. I also had C# and Azure from my previous career.
There was, and still is, a daunting amount to on-board and learn properly to go from an amateur messing about for fun to a professional with a publishable title!
Learn the publishing process
The biggest hole in my knowledge at this point was my complete lack of experience of the publishing process itself. I needed to experience the process of publishing to the likes of Steam, PlayStation Store, Apple's App store and Android's Play Store or at least investigate which ones to target and which ones not to.
I decided I would release a really simple game, simply for the purpose of learning the publishing process.
Keep it simple - but still good!
However I pretty soon realised that its tricky to draw the line on just how simple to be.
If too simple, publishers would refuse it. Even if they did publish it, it would bomb. It might actually do reputational damage! So I wanted my initial game to be one that would be enticing enough for people to actually download and try and it actually genuinely be fun. That ruled out Pong-level simplicity. I didn't think I would learn very much from SUCH a simple game. I also didn't want umunki to be associated with something that primitive. So i needed to strike an impossible balance of quick development but quality product - genuinely good enough quality to get downloads and positive feedback. This game will be my first toe in the dark and murky waters of video game publishing! It will be my future data insights into publishing costs, delays, download stats and price-point. Rather than overthink a new game concept, or rush out a cherished concept such as PolygonPlanet I decided to take forward the 3D Pac-Man experiment. I would modify it to something original but avoid making it more sophisticated in terms of the concept. Try to keep time-consuming 3D modelling, rigging and animation to a minimum. Try to keep the environment simple.
Despite these limits try to make something immersive, atmospheric, compelling and ... fun! Scurry! is the result.
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