Game Jams
Some of the projects I've made as part of a game jam event.
Each created over a few hours, I utilized these as an opportunity to
become accustomed to the engine.
Project Overview
Description
Magnet Mayhem! is a simple infinitne runner game made in 48h for Global Game Jam 2022, with the theme "duality".
Blue and red magnetic blocks lower down from above, with the magnetic player character able to change their polarity to either attract themselves
to blocks, or shoot away from them.
This project was made by myself as the solo programmer, and two artists.
My role
The short nature of game jams necessitated our team working as one when it game to game design, art design, narrative context, etc.
While I implemented all game functionality, and the artists completed most art assets, we contributed equally in all other aspects.
I took on some non-3D art tasks for this project to free up the artists for creating more 3D assets. This included the logo, HUD, introduction page,
and some tween-based animations.
Learnings
As is often the case for developers partaking in game jams, this project forced me to learn aspects of Unity in a short period,
while simultanously forcing me to be comfortable with the idea of cutting back things I'm passionate about in order to meet a deadline.
An unexpected learning from the project, however, is the importance of narrative context. This game is simple enough to only require three button inputs,
yet some of the first things we discussed after agreeing on an idea was aspects of the lore and world.
In a vacuum, I would have assumed wasting hours on this a fool's errand for such a small project, yet it made our project come together much more
cohesively in its presentation.
Us having an understanding of this small robot escaping a steampunk production factory meant that we were all on the same page when it comes to
the game design, the artistic vision, the sound and music cues, the kinds of camera angles and post-processing you might expect, etc.
In post-mortem, this project also taught me an important point on accessibility. While 'just' for a game jam, our entire premise
relied on reading colours, which some players could struggle with. While we did seek feedback from colourblind players, and aimed to
use other sound and visual cues, I realized the importance of considering accessibility in the eariest stages of design for future projects.
Links
You can download Magnet Mayhem! from the GGJ site here!
Project Overview
Description
Where? is tiny platformer game made in 96h for
GameMaker Community Jam 37 in 2020, with the theme "it knows something you don't".
The player is an invisible stick-figure, so must instead watch how the monster is chasing them to infer their location.
This solo project was the first thing I ever published online.
Role & Learnings
I had plenty of familiarity with GameMaker when beginning this project, but wanted a great opportunity to finish a project to completion while experimenting with a concept I hadn't done a tutorial for,
and to experiment with not using pixel art as I always had.
Still, I wanted to find a way to use a unique art style that was unemcumbered by my art skills, that I felt were lacking. I decided to utilize scanned pencil drawings of stick figures
to create a look I found interesting for a game while not being too difficult.
While development ended rather unceremoniously with a monster AI bug that crept in at the last minute, it was one of the first projects that demonstrated to me the importance of creatively utilizing your
limitations - an aspect that I carried through to every other subsequent project in this portfolio.
Links
You can download Where? from my itch.io site here!