As a man in my 40s teaching myself coding and game design, I often find it hard to know where to start. I have a background in fine art and have been making pixel art and sprites since I was a pre-teen. I have virtually no knowledge of music or sound design. On top of it all, my math skills are suspect at best and access to high-end hardware is not in the cards. So, with a bit of experience in the art side of game design and no experience in the rest of the various things that are needed to create games, where does one start?
My first impulse is to go for a low or no-code solution. Not having to learn to code would free me up to focus on the things I already know how to do. I looked into engines like Gdevelop and GameMaker. I found myself lost, spending more and more time figuring out how those engines worked and translating mechanics into bespoke drag-and-drop actions. Frustrated and unproductive, my ventures into game design have led to only a handful of false starts and half-baked prototypes.
I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and learn to code for real. I had always had my eyes on Godot. After the whole Unity debacle, the choice was pretty much made for me. GDScript is a lot like Python and is easy to read. The Node and Signal system is very intuitive. Unreal is too demanding on my modest hardware and C++ might be too low-level for a beginner like me. So, its Godot/GDScript for me. Here we go!