Hi everyone,
After 3 years of learning the basics and about 1 year actively building this project, my first game just went live on Google Play: Terminal Core: System Jump, a fast-paced arcade jumper built entirely solo with Godot 4.
A bit of context on the journey: I’m not a dev (full-time job unrelated to game dev), so a huge chunk of the challenge was figuring out how to make something coherent without that background — lots of trial and error, and honestly, a lot of help from this community along the way (and a lot of Youtube…). Docs, forum threads, random answers to obscure export/plugin questions — it all added up.
On the technical side, a few things that took real effort to get right:
- Integrating Google Play Games Services (leaderboards) and AdMob via their respective Android plugins — getting the Gradle build, signing, and plugin config to actually play nice together took more iteration than I expected.
- Handling the whole Google Play publishing pipeline solo — closed testing, store listing, IARC rating, AdMob app review, Play Integrity settings — a lot of moving parts for a one-person project.
- Actually shipping something finished, rather than another prototype gathering dust — which, if I’m honest, is the part I’m most proud of.
The game itself: simple to pick up, genuinely tough once you’re chasing a real leaderboard score. No fluff, tight timing-based gameplay.
If you want to check it out: Terminal Core: System Jump
I Also used Claude Ai for optimisation before release because I was stuck with performance problems on lowend/medium devices.
Happy to answer any questions and of course, any feedback on the game itself is very welcome. Already sketching out project #2, this time aiming for PC/Steam !
Thanks to this community for getting me here!