Starting at the beginning

As a kid, video games were my whole life. Going into college in 2015, I took a step back from them to focus on studying and internships. When senior year rolled around and I had to pick a capstone project, I decided to join a game team and rekindle my love for video games. I had never made a game before, but I was majoring in Computer Science so I had the programming skills at least. Over the next 9 months, I learned Unity, became the dev lead in my team of 10, went from just a programmer to making many creative and gameplay decisions, and even took part in weekly streams to promote the game. A lot of lessons were learned that year.

Fast forward to the tail end of 2020. I was binge watching Vimlark on Youtube and his enthusiasm for game jams lit a spark in me. I wasn't going to be a one-game developer. I was going to make another game. And this one was going to be bigger and better.

Taking the leap

Sometime in October, I texted Carlos and asked if he wanted to enter a game jam with me. I don't have many talents but one thing I do have is an unshakable work ethic. And of all the game developers I know, the only one who can match me in that area is Carlos. Together, I knew we could make something amazing. And Game-Off 2020 seemed like the perfect platform.

As soon as the theme was announced, we got to work. We spent the entire first week designing the game. We drew inspiration from many different genres and came up with a lot of ideas. One evening, we came up with a mechanic so fun that we played it on paper for hours. At that moment, I knew we had created something good, something with a lot of potential. Michelangelo said that every block of stone has a statue inside it and it's the job of the sculptor to set it free. In our case, our crude graybox 3d models and prototype code had an incredibly fun game hidden inside of it, all we had to do was carve it out.

The next 3 weeks went by fast. We kept playtesting and tweaking our designs along the way, and kept thinking of new and fun ideas to add to the game. And then it hit us - we had over-scoped. The deadline was fast approaching and there wasn't enough time to model and code everything. Not to mention, the game needed audio and other "game feel" effects like particles and lighting. With less than a week to go, I opened up GarageBand for the first time in months and started digging into my rusty songwriting skills to put together a couple of tracks. I also had to learn a bit of 2d art to make the character portraits and icons for the game. I wasn't good at art, but that didn't mean my work had to look amateurish. I worked within my limits and decided on a silhouette style to keep it simple but effective.

3 days before the jam, Carlos sent me all the 3d models. They looked incredible but I didn't have time to enjoy them, I had to implement it all into the game. As I got to work, Carlos started putting together the particles and sound effects. He learned how to use Audacity and put together dozens of unique sound effects for every part of our game. How he did all that so quickly, I'll never know. We stayed up 2 nights in a row, and probably got about 4 hours of total sleep over those 48 hours.

A dream come true

When the submission clock finally counted down to 0, it was a surreal moment. The last 30 days of work had all lead up to this. And now there was a game out there in the world with my name in the credits. I had participated in my first game jam, made my second game ever, and published a game on a popular game store. And people were liking it! The game quickly reached the top of the page for its categories and hit 1400+ views and 700+ plays. I couldn't believe it. All of our hard work had paid off and people were having fun thanks to the efforts we had put in.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses though. Along with compliments came critique. We read every single comment and had long and hard discussions about how to address the problems people were having with the game. The jam version of the game was good and we were proud of it. But it didn't have to end there. Not only could we fix all the problems with the game, we could add to it and make it better.

And that's exactly what we're going to do.

As new indie game developers, we're going to follow our dreams and make the best game we can. We're shooting for the stars. And they might shoot back.

- Red Nur (ColorPalette)