Baby Game Dev Adventures: Interface Design

I have been having some trials and tribulations, lately. A significant portion of such has been the fact that I'm the only one in the entire fam who can freely drive. A majority of my time has been subsumed by driving Mayhem back and forth. Another significant source of frustration has been communication with my target player.

A little bit of background: someone close to my heart has been recommended Sudoku as a form of brain training. The problem being - she's afraid of maths, and therefore the numbers that are inherent in the default form of puzzle.

I tried looking for games that had symbols instead of numbers, and the ones I could find looked twice as confusing as the normal versions.

My solution - make my own.

My problem - I am not a programmer.

So I did a lot of research and looked up ways that numpties like myself could make something like that happen. Including my goal for the symbols - Ducks. Thus, Pseuducku was born.

A pseudo Sudoku game for people who -haha- want to "duck" the math.

Lol.

I started with one game maker, then switched to an operating system that didn't allow said game maker to work properly. So I had to switch game makers. I've been at this for a year. And since every game maker I know of begins with the graphical interface, I managed to fill that time with doing a few art assets.

And I picked up some game dev lingo along the way.

I know what a "mockup" is. I understand what I mean when I ask about the "visual language of the GUI". My 'client' has NO IDEA what my technobabble means.

Which means that some relatively simple decisions have taken literal days just to understand what the question is. Simplifying that kind of thing has been an exercise in frustration on both sides.

At least I should be working on coding soon. Which means, in the fullness of time and with every degree of good luck, I should have something functional to test. And taking things gently with myself as well as my 'client' has been another stressor.

I keep having miniature anxiety peaks regarding whether or not I'm talking down too hard. I keep not receiving wrath, but that fear's always there.

Alongside the fear of failing no matter how hard I try at it.

That's a really big one.

And then I remember that the only way to truly fail is to stop trying. So I keep on trying. Especially, trying to have faith in myself.