My first real experience with game development started in the fall of 2017. Though I’d been learning essential Computer Science skills, and had experience in areas such as creative writing, that semester gave me my first taste of a game development pipeline.
Since then, I’ve taken many classes within the field of game design & development, and honed my abilities with extracurricular game jams and personal projects. Eventually, I began my employment part time at Texas A&M’s LIVE Lab — a research lab that makes educational games.
Over the course of this period, I’ve worked on many games, and learned each step of the way. While they do not represent my present skills, it is good to keep the lessons of the past in mind.
Rocket Jump
Rocket Jump was the very first game I ever worked on. My professor at the time was a strong proponent of the “fail faster” philosophy, and threw the class into the deep end of the pool with an assignment to make a game in a week with absolutely no prior experience.
This was my first time using the Unity engine, and my contribution to the project was level design & implementation. I also sourced all of the art.
You can play the game here.
Project Undercover
Project Undercover is an asymmetric party game where players try to pretend to be NPC’s while accomplishing specific tasks. One special player is given control of security cameras and is tasked with identifying the other players.
As a semester long project for a game course, I worked with a team of four others as the lead designer and project manager. My major contribution was in coordinating the efforts of everyone on the team and helping to maintain a consistent vision through extensive documentation.
Revival Survival
Revival Survival was my very first game jam game, made at Chillennium 2017. I worked with a team of three others — two artists and one other programmer.
While I had some experience using Unity from the previously mentioned classes, I hadn’t coded a movement system before. Being unfamiliar with the available Unity technologies, I mistakenly thought I needed to write my own collision system using raycasts. While I learned a lot, I ended up wasting unnecessary time, which resulted in a largely unfinished game.
Since then, I’ve learned to make games much quicker with a greater understanding of how Unity operates.
You can play the game here.