Our own games – 7/19/18

Our own games

By Yukon Wainczak, Becker College ’20

For many of us, game development wasn’t just a career choice. We make games not because of the job, but because of our passion for games and the process of developing them. Because of this, many of us have built our own games during free time, either by ourselves or with a group of friends. This post is a collection of this year’s SIP interns and their past experiences developing their own games.

• Andrew Jones, UMass Amherst

Dungeon in a Bottle was the first game my friend and I made that got much attention. We made it for the Ludum Dare 38 game jam, where it ranked 37th overall, and it was given a short review by Sebastian Standke of Game Jam Curator.

Getting a positive response from people was really encouraging. It’s hard to make things that are important to you while also not getting discouraged from dreaming too big. The fact that some people like our brightly colored, claustrophobic, hyper-difficult platformer really helped us to keep working.

It’s important to remember that if you yourself find the game you’re making fun, then someone else will, too. Dungeon in a Bottle isn’t super complicated, and it isn’t super ambitious, but it is fun. So if someone else thinks so, too, then I couldn’t possibly ask for more.

• Chloe Tibets, Becker College

A game where you build levels to challenge your friends, S W I T C H was developed at the IGDA: Becker 48-hour game jam my freshman year. It was later posted on itch.io and Newgrounds for people to play with their friends. It had a pretty solid reception, even getting front paged on Newgrounds. Yukon and I teamed up to create this game, with him as a programmer and designer and myself as art and design. This game feels like my true start in game development, being the first game I’ve ever had a hand in making. It really helped me to start understanding the core of game design and development, and in turn, my passion for it.

• Dain Woods, Brown University

Jailbreak is a 1v1 online prison escape game where one player tries to escape from jail without being caught by the other player. Jailbreak began as a project with one of the teams in Brown RISD Game Developers. Some members of that team kept working through the summer and beyond as members of Hi I’m Alec Games – founded by Dain Woods. Jailbreak is currently nearing 2 years in development and anticipating a release to Steam in the coming months.

• Heriberto Calderon, Becker College

Finite was created on Train Jam 2018, a 74 hour game jam on a train to GDC. I was a 3D artist, level designer and producer on the team. On the way to Chicago, one day before the event, I networked with people through the Train Jam Discord and made a team. I recruited the team at the Chicago station, we all clicked as soon as we met. We brainstormed ideas at the train station and started development as soon as we left. It was a beautiful, stinky, and challenging voyage to GDC. Unfortunately for me, I missed my flight to Chicago for Train Jam, so I had to take a train, to the train. Instead of Train Jam being 52 hours, it ended up being 74+ hours for me.

• Kate Olguin, WPI

This is Happy Farm Time. It’s a story-based game where you disobey the directions of a farmer, and as a result the game keeps “crashing” (intentionally) and different parts of the game start glitching out. I made it by myself over the course of 3 weeks in Unity. It was easily the most organized I’d been in making an independent project (I made an asset list and everything) and I learned a lot while making it. Also, since I did it solo, I felt like afterwards I was better able to understand how the different parts of game development fit together. I’m very happy with it since it’s one of the most polished games I’ve ever made, and I was able to create a solid plan and stick to it.

• Matt Surka, Penn

HEARtREAD straddled an important fault line in my life. Before it, I was working a full-time job unrelated to games, and I knew nothing about Unity or programming. After, I was spending most of every week self-teaching in game development, plotting my eventual career change and plunge into engineering school. I’m forever grateful to the project, its incredible team, and everyone who played it. It was a lifegiving experience that encourages me to keep going even today.

• Yukon Wainczak, Becker College

I built iii in during Ludum Dare 38, a weekend long game jam with the theme “Small World”. iii placed 14th place in the jam, which was the first time I have ever done so well. After the jam, I spent a few weeks polishing up the game, eventually releasing a massive patch. Ever since then iii has been featured on several gaming websites and is still being downloaded today. iii was the first of my games that I deem a success, and it made me fall in love with game development all over again.