Dragon's Lair is a new game for Blinks, designed by two members of the developer community. It was offered as a stretch goal in our Kickstarter Campaign and will soon be available. Read on to enter The Dragon's Lair with it's designers Francisco and Spencer.

2. What is the origin story of your game? How did it come to be?

After first discovering Blinks during the Community Set Kickstarter, Spencer happened to catch one of the Move38 Youtube live streams where they mentioned the Blinks developer forum. After learning that it was possible for amateur developers to make their own games, he started to consider what his “ideal” Blinks game would look like.  Eventually, he decided to write a few of these ideas down and the original concept for The Dragon’s Lair began to emerge.

Since Spencer didn’t have any previous programming experience, and his Kickstarter Blinks hadn't arrived yet he had never even considered developing the game himself. However, he figured that he would put some of his ideas out onto the forum so that someone more experienced than he was could potentially use them as inspiration for their games. After he had posted the idea for the original The Dragon’s Lair game concept on the Developers forum he met Francisco. Francisco let Spencer know that he was new to programming as well, and that he had taught himself how to code from the tutorials on the Developer forum. Even though he didn’t have blinks or a developer kit yet either, he had even managed to create a few games himself. He encouraged Spencer to give programming a shot, and let him know that he was happy to help him out along the way.

Together they brainstormed and refined gameplay concepts, and Spencer realized that Francisco shared his vision and excitement for the game. It was then that he asked Francisco to join him as a co-developer on the project. Together they programmed the original prototype for the game long before either of them were able to play it for themselves. After the initial prototype was created, they shifted their attention toward creating artwork for the game and Francisco was able to draft up much of the artwork that would eventually make it into the final game.

If there is one thing that Francisco and Spencer would like people to take away from this story it is that if you work hard and stick with it anyone can learn to program (especially for Blinks). While it might seem intimidating at first, there is a wide range of resources and a friendly and welcoming community waiting for you on the Move38 developer forum if you decide to take the plunge. It’s not as hard as you’d think, and the next great Blinks game could be yours!

3. What do you like best about Blinks? About Developing games on Blinks?

One of our favorite things about the Blinks platform is the open source nature of the games. When we were learning to code, one of our favorite things to do was to open up the code for existing Blinks games and look at the nuts and bolts to see how they work. It was extremely valuable to see how different functions are used properly, and observe how they interact with each other. The Blinks community is also one of the most friendly and helpful places around; they really make things feel less intimidating when starting out.