Rapidly Rolling towards Game Development Success with Vikramaditya Gaikwad

Courtney Schneider

March 27, 2019 in Success Stories

Rapidly Rolling towards Game Development Success with Vikramaditya Gaikwad

Hey everyone! Today we’re joined by Vikramaditya Gaikwad, a programmer who recently published his first game, Rapid Roll

Thanks for joining us, Vikramaditya! Firstly, we’d love to know – how did you get into game development?

Hi guys! I’ve always been a good gamer. The first game that I ever played was Tekken 3, and since then, I’ve played over 300 Android games, and have also enjoyed Xbox games (like the Call of Duty series). I’m currently taking a gap year from my Bachelor of Information Technology at the Government College of Engineering in Karad, India, because of health issues that I’ve had since childhood.

After months of hospital appointments during this gap year, I started to pursue game development through online resources, including YouTube videos, Unity documentation, and Zenva courses. I’d already had some previous experience on Unity – having found it easy to work with as a beginner, I decided to learn the basics in Unity and teach myself C# programming.

Guys, I want to tell you this – I’m really the worst at programming. C, C++, Java… I really struggled with these languages. It wasn’t until I started to C# for Unity that I really got into programming and game development.

It’s fantastic to hear that despite all of the challenges you faced, you persevered – and now your work has paid off in the form of your game, Rapid Roll! Congratulations on your recent release – can you tell us which Zenva resources you used, and how they helped you to create your game?

Thanks a lot, it’s an honor for Rapid Roll to be featured here! I’ve learned a lot of things from Zenva’s blog GameDev Academy, and the Zenva YouTube Channel. I was able to implement all the knowledge that I gained from these resources into my game.

Did the process of creating your game go as smoothly as your game plays, or were there obstacles that you had to face? How did you overcome them?

I thought about different game ideas for a month. I knew that I wanted to create something simple, then thought, “I have to recreate the Rapid Roll game that was on old phones! It was really fun to play this game, wasn’t it?” After trying this out by creating a Rapid Roll game in 2D, I then decided to search Rapid Roll on the Play Store, to compare my game to the other Rapid Roll clones. I found that my game design was the worst of them all! So I decided to give my game the edge by switching from 2D to 2.5D, and now it looks better than all the rest.

Screenshot of Rapid Rolling

I had a lot of technical obstacles to face as well, which I solved by asking senior game developers questions on Unity forums – this helped me a lot. I also listened to my players’ feedback – for example, in the first release, I had some negative comments because of issues with the controller. I was able to fix this in the next update. Another hurdle that I faced was integrating Unity Ads and Google Admob into the game – I faced more obstacles here than in creating the game itself! I was able to solve these issues by carefully going through all of the official documentation on Unity Ads and Admob.

I’m glad that I faced these challenges, as it has given me the full experience of creating a game, from the basics to publishing a game to implementing monetization.

Thanks so much for the honest insight into your process – we’re sure that many of our readers will be able to relate to the hurdles that you faced, and be inspired by how you overcame them! Now that you’ve finished Rapid Roll, what are you hoping to achieve next with your programming?

Before getting into game development, I hated programming – but now I love it. C# seems like the James Bond of programming languages, and I want to work to become a master of the C# language.

Before we say goodbye, do you have any words of advice that you’d like to share with your fellow game developers?

You can do anything that you set your mind to. I’m from an IT background, where game development wasn’t part of the curriculum. But If you’re passionate about it and work on achieving your dreams, you’ll get it one done. Game development is a field where every day you experience setbacks, and every day you’ll learn something new. It requires a lot of patience, guys! But Zenva can really help – they have the best courses. I’ve recently completed the free course Intro to VR Game Development with Unity, and am planning to take the Unity Game Development Mini-Degree and the Virtual Reality Mini-Degree next.

I wish you all the best with your projects, and thank you for having me!

You’re very welcome, Vikramaditya, and thank you for joining us! 

Be sure to check out Rapid Roll on the Google Play Store here

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