That was over 40 years ago. It was called “Water Carrier”. It created a random labyrinth with an entry on the left and an exit on the right, and a number of puddles in it. You could not cross the puddles, but had to “pick them up” with your bucket. Of course, only one puddle fit in that bucket, so you had to empty it at the entrance in order to scoop up the next puddle on your way to the exit. For scoring, it counted the number of steps one needed to get through.

The labyrinth was one of the algorithmic challenges I had as a kid. There was no internet to look up algorithms like that, and the local libraries had no computer related books. So I invented the algorithm myself. Same with sorting, for the “high scores”, which were actually “low scores”, the less steps you needed, the better. For that, I “invented” what I many years later learned was Bubble Sort.

And sorry, no link to it ;-)

I made a clone of Drug Wars in BASIC on the Commodore 64 in…1993? 94? Thereabouts. I have the floppy but no drive that can read a 5¼ disk. I taught myself to type on that beast and then I taught myself BASIC from the book that came with the (used) system when we bought it.

My second game was a text adventure in BASIC that used GOSUB to spawn mobs, heavily inspired by the MUDs I had just started getting access to by taking a course on using the Internet at the local college. I never finished it, because then we got a Win '95 box and with it Heroes of Might and Magic.

My next several dozen games were made using ZZT, with one or two browser-based mixed-text-and-image adventures thrown in as I was also learning webdev.

Oh wait! No, my first couple games were made on Hypercard in the 1992-3 schoolyear when I first tested into the gifted program and started getting consistent weekly access to a computer lab.

Anyway, that brings me through the end of highschool, and in college I learned so many more languages but also had a lot less time for game dev.

I made a terrible idle clicker game when unity screwed it’s users and Godot got a massive rise in popularity. Did it just to see how Godot works.

The game has no art and no saving system. Still had fun poking around with Godot.

Probably one with a jumping ball I made in Game Maker with my cousin about 20 years ago. Unless drawing a labyrinth in Paintbrush on Windows 3.11 and controlling the cursor through it with the arrow keys count for anything? Then it’ll be about 25 years.

My first video game was a tic-tac-toe written in Ding basic (a specialized language for learning programming and creating games). That was 15 years ago.

I made a 3D Rubik’s cube game in 1998 using openGL as part of college work. You could see all six sides simultaneously (two views of 3 sides each) and rotate any row or column. It was pretty usable given you had to use a mouse to rotate.

How much “video game”? My first was a guess the number game with knights jousting, you got left/right/up/down hints for the point on his shield. This was on TRS-80 Model I, summer 1979.

Actually moving “sprites” (character graphics blocks) around the screen, Jetfire was my space shooter not QUITE like Defender because I had no ground, late 1980?

No copies of either survive, they would’ve been on cassettes lost/wiped long ago, a few copies of Jetfire were made for others.

I’ve done a lot more since, of course.

A shitty platformer in gamemaker with great music, but the music is an mp3 of a popular song I downloaded on Limewire.

Not counting a few simple levels made for Duke 3D and Quake, my first game was as a student in Full Sail, in 2003, basically opposite of Defender. Your goal was to zoom around and abduct humans while tanks on the ground shot at you. You had to stay still for your tractor beam to work, and you could also fire lasers straight down. You got 3 lives and, I think, 500 points per human abducted, and 100 points per tank destroyed.

What does create video game include?

A long time ago, maybe around 20 years, I did custom levels for RTS games and shooters. Earth 2150, Source engine, Serious Sam, Quake engine, etc. At some point I also did some 3D modeling. Then I participated in a Source mod community project, as part of a team; a Stargate themed mod.

More “recently”, I created (an) Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe (cross-dimension, cross-playing-fields tic tac toe), personal game jam project Energy Consumer (mainly a programming exercise given the limited time), game jam project with a friend Frogventure.

All other dabbling, interest, and ideas have not concluded in any significant development or products, partly due to lack of motivation and connection to people or people’s interest.

It was called MCK. It was “minecraft but 2d and the blocks and player character are made of text” and the world was only 100x100 blocks

I made it ~13years ago