Forem: Olivia Taylor

Step-by-Step Guide: Develop a Mario Game Without Prior Experience!

Olivia Taylor — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 08:34:25 +0000

Have you ever dreamed of building your own Mario-style game, but felt intimidated by coding? Don’t worry—you’re not alone. Whether you're a beginner or someone just dabbling in game development, creating a side-scrolling platformer inspired by Super Mario is totally within reach. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to start developing your very own Mario-inspired game—no prior experience required.

Why Make a Mario-Style Game?

Before we dive into the steps, let’s talk about why building a Mario-style game is a great beginner project:

Familiar Gameplay: You already know how it should feel.
Clear Mechanics: Running, jumping, collecting coins—classic and achievable.
Great for Learning: It covers essential concepts like physics, collisions, animations, and level design.

Understand the Core Gameplay Elements

Let’s break down what makes a Mario game... well, a Mario game.

2D Side-Scrolling Movement
Jump Mechanics
Enemy Behaviour
Power-Ups & Collectibles
Level Progression
End Goals (like a flag or checkpoint)

These elements will shape the foundation of your game, regardless of what tools or platform you use.

Choose a Game Engine or Platform

If you're just starting out, GDevelop or Scratch are great options. If you're comfortable trying a bit of code, Godot or Unity will give you more long-term power.

Build Your Player Character

Whether you’re drawing your own sprite or using free assets, here’s what your main character should do:

Run left and right
Jump (with gravity)
Interact with the environment (blocks, platforms, etc.)
Collect items (coins, mushrooms, etc.)

Pro Tip: Many free Mario-style sprite sheets are available online on sites like OpenGameArt, atozfreegames.com, itch.io, and Kenney.nl.

Create the Game World

Start building your first level using a tilemap or grid-based layout. You’ll need:

Ground tiles
Pipes or platforms
Bricks/blocks
Background visuals
Hidden areas (optional)

Level Design Tips:

Start simple: one level with a clear beginning and end

Gradually introduce new elements
Playtest after every change

Add Enemies and Obstacles

No Mario-style game is complete without Goomba-like enemies!

Basic enemy behavior:

Patrol left and right
Hurt the player on contact
Can be defeated by jumping on them

More advanced behaviors (if you're ready for it):

Enemies that shoot
Flying or jumping enemies
Boss fights

You can create this behavior visually (in Scratch or GDevelop) or with simple code (in Godot or Unity).

Include Sound & Music

Sound is key to making your game feel complete. You’ll want:

Jump sounds
Coin collection sounds
Background music
Game Over jingle

There are lots of royalty-free audio libraries like:

Freesound.org
Zapsplat
Kenney Audio Assets

Playtest & Polish

Game development is a process of iteration. Don’t aim for perfection right away—just keep testing.

Things to check:

Does jumping feel responsive?
Do collisions work correctly?
Are the enemies too hard or too easy?
Does the level have a clear goal?
Ask friends to play it and give feedback!

Export and Share

Once your game is ready:

**Scratch: **Share it directly on the Scratch website
GDevelop / Godot / Unity: Export as a web game, desktop game, or even mobile
itch.io: A great free platform to upload your indie game

This is the most rewarding step—letting others enjoy your creation!

Bonus Tips for Beginners

Start small: A one-level demo is better than an unfinished big idea.
Use tutorials: YouTube and forums like r/gamedev and Stack Overflow are goldmines.
Stay motivated: Game dev takes time, but every step you complete is a win.

Conclusion

You don’t need to be a coding genius to develop a fun and fully playable Mario-style game. With today’s beginner-friendly tools, free assets, and communities ready to help you, all you really need is creativity and patience. However, if you want to play Mario games online, you can visit our website.

Whether you're using Scratch, GDevelop, or Unity, this project can teach you valuable programming, design, and problem-solving skills—and you’ll end up with something you can actually play and share.

Your Go-to Guide on Typography in UI Design

Olivia Taylor — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 10:56:00 +0000

The first time I came across this image on the Internet, I laughed so hard. I laughed because it is so true and explained in such a subtle way! I’m really happy that someone actually made this image!

So, yes, font matters! Using the right font in UI design is of sheer importance. This is because a wrong choice can simply kill your UI design. Maybe your users will get a 180 degree turned message from what you actually intended to convey.

And you know what, it is not just the fonts. I’m talking about the throughout typography you use in UI design. The font is just an element of typography.

Your choice of typography is either going to make or break your website’s or app’s UI design. And a UI design that cannot communicate with your users makes no sense at all. So, it plays a major role in making your product successful.

Unsure whether you are doing it right or not? Here is your go-to guide on how you should use typography in UI design.

A Quick Sneak Peek To Typography

“Isn’t the text too small?”

“Something is wrong with it! Maybe the words are not aligning with the image.”

I’m sure UI/UX designers are familiar with these kinds of words coming from their clients!

So, what’s wrong here? It is the typography.

Typography is basically the art of presenting texts, line-spacing, typeface, line length along with other design elements. When these different elements are put together in a well-organized way, it delivers a readable and pleasant user experience. A brilliantly designed typography can successfully transform human interaction into a strong and impactful visual-form.

Let’s Take A Deeper Look At The Business Benefits Of Using The Right Typography

Today, creating an impeccable user experience is a necessity. No matter how feature-packed your product is unless it delivers a satisfying and smooth user experience, your users won’t love it. And to craft that user-loving “X” factor, along with many other aspects, typography plays a significant role.

It sets the right tone or mood - Well, you can simply put a message with basic typography. But if you want to add a bit of excitement, fun, or seriousness to it, depending on the tone of your message, you have to choose suitable typography.

It amplifies readability - How you want your users to comprehend the UI design you deliver totally depends on how great the readability of your UI design is. The better the readability, the more users feel connected to your product, app, or service.

Delivers impressive visual experience - The wisely chosen typography can successfully pervade an engaging vibe and offer a delightful user experience.

Helps to establish your brand recognition - In today’s vying business market, you can stand out only if you are unique, innovative, and can establish your brand recognition properly. And the wisely chosen typography helps you in achieving your goals.

It showcases sheer professionalism - Choosing such typography that blends well with your brand vision along with market standards helps you to flaunt professionalism. It encourages interested clients to put trust in your ability and brand.

Boosts conversion rate - When you use the right typography, users find it engaging and spend more time to understand the context. Thus, it automatically boosts the chances of conversion.

The Ingredients Of Cooking The “perfect” Typography Recipe

You can’t cook a palatable dish unless you know what ingredients to use. So, here are the crucial typography elements you should know about. Also, find out some pro tips on using these elements rightly.

Typeface and Font

Many designers make the mistake of thinking “typeface” and “font” as each other’s synonyms! This is wrong.

Usually, the typeface refers to a design style that comprises a complete set of characters, numbers, letters, and symbols with similar features. In simpler words, think of typeface as the family. And fonts are just a part of that family.

Most designers play creatively with these fonts and typefaces to create stellar typography. It brings out the aesthetic vibes and engages users effectively.

Mean Line and Baseline

To create a flawless visual presentation, placing all the characters maintaining a straight line is important. And the baseline and mean line make sure this is being done rightly and neatly.

By the mean line, the top of the characters is marked and by baseline, the bottom of the same.

These lines make sure that the fonts used by the designers are even.

Negative Space, Alignment, And Line Spacing

“The less is more” might have become a cliche these days. But in the case of typography and web design psychology, it is the intense truth!

To stand out in the competitive market, everyone wants to showcase the best shots they have got in their pockets. But that does not necessarily mean you have to put up everything on the page to flaunt your skills.

Unbalanced whitespace in your typography can decrease the readability. So, the more smartly you can use the “whitespace” or the “negative space” in typography, the better your UI design becomes.

Line spacing refers to the distance between two consecutive baselines. And just as shown in the picture above, you have to make sure you are not making it “too tight” or “too much”!

Another notable factor is alignment. Rather than just randomly placing texts, designers, please make sure you are maintaining the alignment properly. Otherwise, even if the texts are so engaging and the design layout looks impressive, things might not blend properly and ruin all your effort.

Character Measurement

Using fonts in different sizes and weight is so common among the UI/UX designers. Usually, they use it to highlight any important point or grab users’ attention to a particular section.

The size of the characters is measured in pixels, millimeters, or inches. And the type weight usually refers to how thick a particular character is.

Designers refer to the height of a character by “x-height”. This is because every character’s body is based on the size of the letter “x” in that particular format. This approach is widely practiced among web design companies all over the world. And it is helpful to make every character look even.

Tracking

To form a block of texts or a word, you need a set of type characters right? Now, tracking is all about adjusting those little spaces between all the type characters of font.

By adjusting the space, designers let the typography breathe a bit. And they make it more visually pleasing. Also, it helps in increasing the readability.

Kerning

Even if this process too involves adjusting spaces between characters just like tracking, these are completely different things.

Kerning is all about adjusting spaces between two consecutive types of characters. It is not like kerning is used everywhere. For special cases, where the designers think that giving a little bit more space or a bit lesser space will make the design look more natural, they use it.

Bonus Hacks To Make Your Typography More Engaging And Impressive

So far, you got to know the basics of typography. Here are some pro hacks for you that will help you to come up with stellar typography in UI design.

Using too many fonts on one page is not really cool. It is more like everyone is fighting to get attention. So, it is better if you can keep the number of used fonts at a minimum.

Wisely choose such a typeface that works pretty well in different sizes.
Try to keep your line length shorter.

Opt for such a font where readers can distinguish each letter.

Do not think that making text caps will put more weight in the message. Rather, play with it. So, putting texts where everything is in caps is A BIG NO!
Use the right contrast.

It is better not to use blinking texts.

So, are you ready to rock and roll the UI design of your next web project? Follow these tricks and make the best out of your idea.