You Can Do It! Finally Releasing My First Game
For those considering whether they want to take the plunge into hobby game dev, I want to give some words of encouragement. There is a lot of negativity and toxicity in gaming communities, but if you are invested, this is absolutely something you can do!
I do not have a lot of spare time in my life, but in roughly five hours per week, after about eight months, I've gone from having no idea what I'm doing to releasing my first game on the Google Play store. It's a relatively simple 2D mobile game that I'm sure someone more experienced could have whipped up much faster, but I learned so much in the process, and was able to tune it to exactly what I wanted it to be.
I did not put any serious monetization or marketing behind it (free game, no ads, only a 99 cent cosmetic basically just to learn that aspect of development also), so it certainly isn't going to "pay off," but the feeling of accomplishment is great, and I now feel much more confident in my technical skills.
Considering how small my project is I don't know that I have the expertise to really be offering advice, but if you are just starting out or wondering where to begin I am happy to talk more about the process (especially if you are looking interested in developing for Android / with Unity).