I'm new to game development. I have been learning Unity and Blender for the past 2 months.

I want to have a future career in game development. I've heard that having a completed project on your resume is good. Now, I've also heard that creating a good indie game takes years.

This year I'm quite busy, so i'm wondering, what if for my first game, I don't focus on creating a fun game, but I just focus on executing the typical indie game dev steps (i.e implementing the mechanics, art and music, and releasing it). And the end goal would be that I can say in my resume "Created and released game X on itch.io and steam...".

Can I do this in a month? Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of as a newcomer?

silenceDogood said:
I've heard that having a completed project on your resume is good. Now, I've also heard that creating a good indie game takes years.

Seems like you're going about it backwards. You're supposed to be telling what you have actually done, not trying to pad it with what you think they might want.

That said, you can follow tutorials and churn out basic games based on the tutorials. Even a tiny amount of digging and questioning by your potential employer should sus those details out, either exposing you as having no clue or disclosing that you do in fact happen to know what you're claiming.

Their questions to you during the interview to you are more important than your resume, which mostly serves as a convenient handle for topics they can easily ask about. What you include on your resume can help get the interview and they'll be asking probing questions about your past projects. If your project was shallow it will be discussed, if your project was deep it will be discussed. Anyone skilled in interviewing can quickly drill down to the depths of your background.

silenceDogood said:
Can I do this in a month? Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of as a newcomer?

Can you build a game in a month, following tutorials? Sure. Will it help you during an interview? Maybe, depending on how well you actually learn versus how much is coloring inside the lines. Are there pitfalls? Yes, look over this list, your post includes quite a few of them.

A completed game product is easy, takes about 30 minutes. It's fine if you work longer on it, say for a month.

Make a screen with a button on it named “click me!”. When the user hits button give a message “You won!”.

Build a release, and put it up for sale. Done!

So while technically you then have a finished game project that you can use in your resume, how valuable do you think this experience is to a future employer?

Now consider what happens when you do something in a month. Likely with a somewhat larger game than a single button, but still, how convincing will that look to an employer?

An employer has real problems that need solving. They are not covered in any tutorial that exists. They are also not already solved or they wouldn't have the problem at all. An employer needs to have them solved, and you are going to have to do that. In other words, you should be capable of finding solutions to open problems.

Before they hire you, they want to be sure that you are up for the job. They need convincing you can do it. So what is the best way for you to make clear you're the person for that?