Starting a Game in Unreal: A Beginner’s Journey
Introduction
This blog marks the beginning of a long‑term personal project: learning game development and building my first game using Unreal Engine.
I come from a background in photography, CGI, and 3D visualization.
Over the years I’ve worked extensively with visual storytelling, composition, lighting, and digital craft, but interactive worlds are something entirely new to me.
This blog will serve as an open notebook.
A place to document experiments, small wins, mistakes, research, and slow progress toward something playable.
Not a tutorial series. Not expert advice.
Just a record of learning by doing.
Why Game Development?
I’ve always been interested in worlds.
Not just how they look, but how they feel to move through.
Games combine many of the things I already care about:
Visual atmosphere and lighting
Spatial composition and architecture
Sound, mood, and pacing
Storytelling through environments rather than words
Game development feels like a natural extension of my work with CGI and visual design, but with a layer of interactivity that completely changes how everything works.
That’s what makes it intimidating.
And interesting.
Why Unreal Engine?
Unreal Engine felt like the right place to start for a few reasons:
Strong real‑time lighting and rendering
Visual fidelity that aligns with my background in CGI
A large ecosystem of documentation and community content
Blueprint visual scripting for prototyping
I don’t expect it to be easy.
But I do expect it to be deep.
What This Project Is (and Isn’t)
This project is:
A long‑term learning process
An experiment in interactive world‑building
A way to understand game development from the inside
A creative outlet separate from client work
This project is not:
A commercial product
A polished indie game in six months
A YouTube‑style “how to become a game dev” guide
I’m deliberately keeping expectations low and curiosity high.
Current State
Right now, the project is nothing more than:
A blank Unreal Engine level
A default character controller
Basic camera movement
A lot of reading and watching
Which is exactly where it should be.
At this stage, the goal isn’t production.
It’s orientation.
Learning how the engine thinks.
Learning what I don’t yet understand.
What I’ll Be Writing About Here
Future posts will likely include:
Small Unreal Engine experiments
Lighting and atmosphere tests
Movement and camera prototypes
Environment block‑outs
Notes on things that confused me
Things that unexpectedly worked
Research into game design concepts
Some posts will be technical.
Some will be reflective.
Some will probably just be screenshots and notes.