Key to success lies in planning

Great! Now you have your development environment set up and a basic understanding of what a game is and what it might need. It appears to be a good idea to dedicate some additional time to think about your first game project and create a plan for it. In general, planning your game projects is what you should always do in the first place before any actual work is done. For novice game developers, it might be very tempting to skip this planning phase, which admittedly is a lot more fun in the beginning, but this approach is very likely to fall short in the long run. You will need some sort of outline of what you want to achieve. It does not have to be a very long and detailed description.

A simple and brief feature list of your design goals will do just fine for this purpose. The reason behind this is that you will make yourself aware of each single feature that is a part of your game. In addition, this list will also serve you as a great tool to measure and compare your progress in the game during the development phase. Bear in mind that game development is a very dynamic and iterative process. Although, you should try to adhere to your list of design goals for most of the time, there should always be room to adapt to shifting requirements. Just keep in mind that adhering to the list will make sure that you are going to push development in the right direction. Conversely, it will let you focus on the important parts first, while also protecting you from running out of time and taking too many detours, which prevents you from reaching the finish line due to unclear goals.