Making a little game to try out and learn 3D dev

I've wanted to try out making a game in 3D for a long time now, I've always stuck to 2D games thinking it would be a lot easier but there's a few reasons I may have had this backwards and it's about time I dived in to find out.

Knowing I can't draw (seriously, you don't want to be on my team in Pictionary) or make anything aesthetically appealing in pixel art but do have some experience with CAD, I've been thinking at the very least the art side would actually be easier in 3D for me personally. Turns out yes, it is. My god it's so much easier and faster. Also what's this... Particles? Feels just like working in After Effects, another workflow I'm much more familiar with. This is great. To be fair Godot also has particles in 2D which I've used and liked using but I've been using it even more already since starting this project.

Lighting really makes a huge difference to how good things look in games and like film and TV I'd say it's the most important especially if you're lacking in other areas. I can really appreciate how hard it is to mimic lighting in 2D art, painstakingly applying it over and over, frame by frame because I don't have the patience for that. I've made a couple slack attempts at learning to draw but simply do not have the passion and drive for that kind of art, I'm much more at home slapping a few objects into a scene and tweaking lighting and various other effects parameters in until it looks like how I imagined it. 

The game wasn't even supposed to be this complicated, for the first time working in a 3D game engine I was originally thinking of the most simple game to replicate, like Pong, for the sake of learning and focusing on the technical execution without having to think much about designing a game from scratch. However that didn't really appeal and I thought hey why not pick a simple board game to adapt instead. Something small, with few mechanics but more fun and with a bit of room for creative solutions. Deep Sea Adventure was the first to come to mind and it helped that I really enjoy the game, it packs a lot of gameplay, intense moments and laughter into a tiny box and everyone I've played it with has enjoyed it. If I can capture even just a sliver of its essence in this game then I would have done very well and exceeded the expectations of the original goal.

So basically, scope creep turned my probably single day making Pong in 3D into more than likely many months of working on this multiplayer couch party game about diving down for shiny trinkets, while gambling your fellow crews oxygen supply and trying to not think about the shark shaped shadow that just passed by cause you've got to go deeper cause that's where the most shiny stuff is oh and don't mind that muffled scream you just heard, I'm sure it's nothing... Oh are we at less than half the oxygen already, I'm sure that's enough to make it back and before  you know it your dead on the doorstep of the submarine and only person who made it back alive wins with a single wood barrel of very salty wine.