In this post, we are writing a quick review for Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games, another of the most popular Udemy courses, by Ben Tristem and Rick Davidson.
Length: 35 hours
Total students: 295.000+
Includes: 4 articles, 27 resources
Rating: 4.6
Category: Development > Game Development > Unity
C# is a powerful modern language which is expressive, elegant, and type-safe. As C# is getting more noticed, there is a need for a qualified tutorial to help developers know their way around this object-oriented language.
For that reason, the online class Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games on Udemy has been highly sought after since its release in 2014.
Meet the Instructors
As the teachers and their way of teaching largely affect a course, let’s first take a quick look at the instructors’ profiles. Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games is taught by Ben Tristem, his team, and Rick Davidson.
Ben Tristem
Ben Tristem is one of the best-selling instructors on Udemy. Having earned a degree in computing from Imperial College London and a physics diploma from the Open University, he started his teaching career and never looked back. He also created GameDev.tv to help anyone learn how to develop, design, and sell Indie games.
Rick Davidson
Rick Davidson is a Career Coach with over 14 years of experience in the Video Game industry. He founded an Indie game studio, Inspirado Games, which was acquired in 2012 by Electronic Arts / PopCap. He has worked on cool IPs such as Mario, Transformers, Captain America, and Mortal Kombat, and created successful new IPs from scratch such as GardenMind which was nominated for Canadian Game of the Year in the social/mobile category. Rick is also well-known for his other top-rated course, RPG Core Combat Creator: Learn Intermediate Unity C# Coding.
At First Glance
Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games started as a runaway success on Kickstarter and has gone on to become the most popular and most watched Unity game development course on Udemy.
What You’ll Learn
Throughout the course, you will learn how to create video games using Unity, the world-leading free-to-use game development tool. You will go on to build several games including:
- Laser Defender: A Top-Down Space Shooter with enemies to shoot and dodge;
- Glitch Garden: A Tower Defense game with different tower types and enemy types, and a basic resources system;
- Tile Vania: A fast-paced classic Side-Scrolling Platformer using Unity’s Tilemap tool;
- Block Breaker: A basic “Breakout” style game which introduces Unity’s built-in physics engine.
In case you prefer to start with 3D games, you can check out the sister course Complete C# Unity Developer 3D: Learn to Code Making Games.
For each demo game you build, you will follow this process:
- First, you will try to build the entire game by yourself.
- Then, the instructors will show you step-by-step on how to build it. This way, if you have problems with the process, you will know how to solve them. On the other hand, if you already ease the challenges, you can check whether there are things to speed up the process.
- Later on, you will be challenged to apply, and re-apply your knowledge regularly.
Whereas this course is already huge, not everything can be included. For instance, performance optimization, editor plugins or modifications, physics engine modification will not be covered. However, there are separate mini-courses on those topics you can enroll in if interested.
Course Content
The course has 220 lectures in total, which are divided into 10 digestible sections. These sections all have full English closed-captions throughout.
- Introduction & Setup
- Number Wizard – Basic C# Coding. This is your introduction to variables and how to fix Visual-Studio problems.
- Text101. At the end of this section, you will create a WebGL build and actually publish it online.
- Number Wizard UI. Here you will learn how to create Button Click to load scenes and prepare game screens.
- Block Breaker. This segment is divided into six smaller parts with six tests to check your understanding.
- Laser Defender. This portion of the course has the same structure as in Block Breaker.
- Glitch Garden. This is the longest section of the course and probably the hardest.
- Updates And Important Messages
- TileVania – 2D Tilemap Platformer. Here you will be learning about TileVania Game Design, 2D Collision, and more layout effects.
- Continuing Your GameDev Journey
Basic Requirements
- Mac or PC capable of running Unity 2018.
- A free download of Unity 5 to review the original content of the course (optional).
- A passion and willingness to learn how to code.
Udemy Reviews – Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games
The 2D course was great! I came in as a complete noob and definitely have picked up nuggets of knowledge from doing the content work. I’m on the 3D course now and always enjoy your (Ben and Rick) explanations on why we do things a certain way as beginners. I’m excited to continue my journey. Thank you so much!
Jordan Gibson
Great course, it’s to the point and has many challenges throughout that you have to solve yourself. In case you do not succeed in solving them yourself, the instructor always shows you the solution and provides an explanation. After taking this and the 3D one, I feel like I can begin to create my own game. I will also buy the RPG course when I will have the time to actually finish it. I can’t recommend GameDev.tv courses enough. Great work!
John Smith
What I Love About the Course
1. The Explanations Are Easy to Understand
In this course, you will learn from the basics all the way to some pretty complicated stuff. And yet, I never left a topic feeling like I didn’t understand something. Most of the time when I got stuck or something didn’t work as expected, I found it was on me. I would usually miss a step or two while looking away at my other screen where Unity was running.
Not only will you learn a lot about Game Development but you’ll leave this course with the building blocks and knowledge necessary to begin creating your own games.
2. The Difficulty Curve
If you’re a gamer, you must have noticed that the difficulty in a great game should increase over time to match the player’s skill level. Still, the level of difficulty must build on previous challenges. The same goes for education.
The application with learning is that a student should be exposed to increasingly difficult concepts, but be re-exposed to earlier challenges when the stake is high, which results in the student feeling more capable and getting a chance to review.
Ben Tristem and Rick Davidson have done a pretty good job at that. They build students up, challenge them, and then come back to review things. This way, you will be encouraged to learn new things and finish more challenges, which leads to the third reason why I love the course.
3. Challenges: A Great Way to Encourage Active Learning
Research has shown that active learning has a great impact on skill development in the sciences. Many courses have tried to implement active learning in their syllabus but ended up sounding like “I don’t want to teach you this so go do the research yourself.”
As Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games is project-based, the frequency of challenges is even more than other courses. But for me, this is the best way to learn Unity and C#. You will not just be learning dry programming concepts but applying them immediately to real indie games as you go.
Fortunately, all of the challenges in this course match quite well with the concepts and in-depth of the course. Additionally, all the project files will be included along with supplemental references and resources so you can always go back and check for yourself.
4. Some Other Little Things
- After a quarter of the course, I found out that Rick sounds much better at 1.25 speed. Also, seeing him forget something or make a typo made the course feel more realistic. Usually, these mistakes would open up new concepts to learn.
- The first six projects have been completely updated to Unity 2018. The remaining are in the process of being replaced with new videos on a daily basis. Therefore, you can rest assure that the course is not outdated yet.
- You will have access to a course forum where you can discuss topics on a course-wide basis, or down to the individual video. This thriving discussion forum will help you learn and share ideas with other students.
- The natural teaching of Ben and his dynamic with the secondary teacher make the class have a friendly air to it.
What I’m Not So Thrilled About
At first glance, Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games looks like a typical beginner tutorial on YouTube. However, it’s not quite like that.
While the first few sections are, in fact, for complete beginners, the course increases the challenge level consistently. In the end, students are put up against the final challenge of building a full multiplayer game.
As a result, a complete beginner may feel comfortable in the early phases but is likely to drop out mid-way. In contrast, a skilled student will be frustrated by the slow pace early on, feel at home in the middle, and finally feel challenged adequately in the end.
Who Should Join the Course
In keeping this review short and digestible, I would like to say that Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games is a course worth taking.
The class is easy to understand and most difficult concepts are thoroughly explained. The projects and challenges are delicately designed to trigger the active learning side in students. You’ll go through a difficulty curve that helps you review what you’ve learned while challenging yourself to new concepts.
However, as stated above, a complete beginner might fit in at first but feel dizzy later. So, if you’re new to Unity or C#, take your time, work hard, and earn it.
If you like my review for Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: Learn to Code Making Games, don’t forget to give me a thumb up.
Happy coding!