I’m new to Unity and looking for some advice before I start my first game. My goal is to create a simple multiplayer strategy game where players build and grow a medieval village. The core gameplay involves assigning workers (the players themselves) to different resource-gathering jobs during the day and bringing them back to rest at night. Players can collaborate, see where their friends are working, and use collected resources to construct new buildings on a grid-based system (possibly hexagonal). The game will allow zooming, panning, and rotation, but I want to keep things as simple as possible while learning.
My Questions:
2D vs. 3D for Mobile: I have experience with Blender but have never worked with 2D assets. Since it’s a mobile game, would it be better to stick with 2D for performance reasons, or is 3D still a viable option?
Where to Start? I’m unsure about the best workflow. Should I begin with the grid system, the terrain, the UI, or something else? Any structured approach would be helpful.
Using Free Unity Assets: Can I legally use free assets from the Unity Asset Store for a published game?
Learning Resources: Any specific tutorials, documentation, or courses on strategy games with grid-based building mechanics would be greatly appreciated.
The game you’re describing is far from simple. Even without the multiplayer component, it remains quite complex for a beginner.
My tip is to start with something much simpler and progress in small steps. Begin with a basic tic-tac-toe game for desktops only, then move on to Tetris, followed by Pac-Man, and then a simple platformer. After that, try adding a two-player mode to tic-tac-toe and then adapt it for mobile. Gradually increasing the complexity in this way will help you build the necessary skills before attempting a game like the one you’re describing.
No amount of learning resources can fully prepare a beginner to implement a game of that scale without first practicing with simpler projects like the ones I mentioned.
Simple answer is, you are not ready for such project, which would take a year at least, for an experience developer, while working full time on the game. And also having portfolio of completed games.
You are atm not in the position of any of above points.
So you options are as previous commenter, start with very basics. If that is not appealing to you, the game dev may not be for you.
If committed to build some small games and making desktop releases, then perhaps in few years time, you may reach point, when you may be enough understanding, to make RTS, multiplier, mobile game.
3D is and 2D are both viable for mobile performance. 2D is generally easier to learn, but it can become more labor as time goes on. Personally I prefer to use 3D because of the ability to recycle assets and modify store bought assets.
I think you should work on the grid system first, which includes your camera panning, zooming and rotation. For now just use cubes or very simple place holder models. You should be able to click and drag a cube to a new a grid square, and it will snap in place and remain there. Sometimes building the first step helps the second step reveal itself.
By default, free assets fall under the Asset Store Terms of Service: The Best Assets for Game Making | Unity Asset Store which states you may use asset in a commercial game. However each asset may have it’s own license which changes this.
Personally I learnt Unity by using Udemy, specifically Ben Tristam’s course (https://www.udemy.com/course/unitycourse2/?couponCode=KEEPLEARNING). It was a great introduction to making some pretty detailed games. While it may be an unpopular opinion I also think LLM chatbots are very good at helping to plan a project. I use ChatGPT, Grok and Notion AI.
Thank you very much guys for the help.
I took your advices into consideration and started with programming very simple 2D games and some youtube tutorials, thanks again all!
