/// ! UNDER CONSTRUCTION ! ///
--- well, this is embarrassing. ---
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I never said I was a good coder.
Just take this, and let's both forget this ever happened, alright?
/// Ordeals of Absolution ///
--- The First of Many ---
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Game Maker Studio 2
Genre: Action RPG
Game Jam? Yes, see itch.io page.
Sole Developer? No, did everything except music and story.
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My first experience working on a true standalone game. A collaborative pet project that gradually grew more and more serious as I fell in love with the project and the process.
It was inspired by various other games in the same genre/engine such as Hyper Light Drifter and Hotline Miami, and wears that inspiration on its sleeve.
/// Ad Abyssum ///
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Game Maker Studio 2
Genre: Roguelike/Dungeoncrawler
Game Jam? Yes, see itch.io page.
Sole Developer? Yes.
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A dungeoncrawler game inspired by games of the same genre from my childhood such as Pixel Dungeon and the Pokémon: Mystery Dungeon series. It follows a character I had created for a game of Dungeons & Dragons, and bears a similar world structure.
This project was unfortunately my first encounter with the dreaded "crunch" that plagues most modern-day game developers and studios. I was struggling with my second semester of college along with a lack of vision which ultimately led to me abandoning the project initially until I would come back some months later to submit it to a separate game jam.
After this, I learned that it's always better to simply put a project down if I feel a burnout coming rather than rush in with dissatisfaction.
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"A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is bad forever."
- Shigeru Miyamoto, supposedly.
/// Raze ///
--- [Still In Development] ---
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Unity
Genre: First Person Shooter/Roguelite
Game Jam? No.
Sole Developer? Yes.
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My current favorite project. I'm waiting for a long period of free time to present itself before I get back to work on it as I want to give it 100% of my effort.
Inspired by games such as ULTRAKILL, DOOM, The Binding of Isaac, and the first Legend of Zelda.
/// OmniRush ///
--- A New Adventure ---
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Roblox
Genre: First Person Shooter
Game Jam? No.
Sole Developer? Yes.
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My first step into using Roblox as a platform to develop games. I had considered it during my time working in GMS2, but only seriously considered it at this point. I was (and occasionally still am) an avid Roblox user and my account reflects that. Having played a lot of Roblox in my childhood, it's a bit nostalgic to finally be on the developer-side of the Roblox engine.
I thought an easy first game would be a first person shooter in the style of Quake with fast, linear movement and high-damage weapons.
If only I knew how difficult the jump from 2D to 3D would be.
In retrospect, having completed many more games and gained a deeper understanding at this point, I could easily remake this entire game and have it be a lot more fluid and playable, but personally I feel that defeats the purpose of making a prototype.
Looking back at something you now deem incomplete or amateurish is an excellent way to gauge how much you have improved not just as an artist, but as a person as well.
/// Dark Depths ///
--- The Start of an Annoying Trend ---
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Roblox
Genre: Horror
Game Jam? No.
Sole Developer? Yes.
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If you've read the subtitle and have any idea what a dictionary is, you might be able to guess what the trend is.
My second Roblox game was a singleplayer horror game that I had the idea for way back in high school. It was meant to be the kind of game that wouldn't rely on jumpscares, and instead would deprive you of your senses in some areas [removing agency from the player, increasing tension] and constantly have some enemy chase you, even through walls.
I think the idea was very novel at the time I came up with it, most horror games were [in my opinion] cheap, and relied too much on scares, so I wanted to try something different.
Did I succeeded in redefining the horror genre? Absolutely not. Do I think this is a good game? Not really. This was just another dart on the dartboard for me.
But it did get a good reaction out of one of my old friends, so in a sense, maybe I succeeded.
/// Alone in the Dark ///
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Roblox
Genre: Horror
Game Jam? No.
Sole Developer? Yes.
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For many years growing up in this rural hellhole I realized that this dead-silent house in the middle of the night is terrifying.
Nine times out of ten, there was absolutely nothing except my own delusions and half-asleep hallucinations filling the complete darkness in those hallways, and in a brief moment of lucidity before turning the lights off in my room I thought to myself, "boy, wouldn't this make for a neat little short horror experience?"
This was maybe the most fun I had thinking about "what makes something scary?", and the answer I ultimately came to was one of two things.
The first is pretty obvious if you've ever seen a horror movie with more than 3 stars, and that's "The Fear of the Unknown". The human mind is really interesting in how it knows innately what you're afraid of, and what really unsettles you the most, even if you're not thinking about it. Whatever image you come up with in your mind for the terror lurking underneath your bed is far scarier than any piece of media could ever hope to accomplish.
The second one ties into the first one, and that is absolutely nothing.
Not to spoil the game too much [not that it really matters, the experience is something around 20-30 minutes long.], but sometimes the scariest enemy is yourself.
After all, why would I lie in the title of my own game?
/// Fright Fortress ///
--- this is the last one, i promise ---
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Roblox
Genre: Co-op Horror
Game Jam? No.
Sole Developer? Yes.
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One of my favorite things to do as a developer is something that many other creatives in various other fields may be inclined to agree on being relatively fun, or at least say they've done in their long journey to get to where they are.
That's to take something I know and love from my past and try to recreate it in my own way, in this case this is an attempt to recreate some of the mechanics from the Team Fortress 2 game mode "Slender Fortress" in Roblox.
If you've never played or heard of it, I highly recommend trying it out for a night or two with a group of friends as it's truly one of my most memorable co-op horror experiences. In essence, it takes heavy inspiration from the classic horror game "Slender: The Eight Pages", and recreates some of its gameplay in Team Fortress 2. For what it is, it's fairly advanced and really immersive for being a TF2 mod, and is the perfect mix of silly and genuinely terrifying.
At first I mainly wanted to recreate the HUD and Flashlight system from Slender Fortress because I believed the camcorder-like aesthetic was really good looking, and I wanted more practice in regards to making good looking HUDs and GUIs in Roblox. After I reached the goal of making a fairly good looking flashlight and HUD, I began branching out more and more into other systems such as sprinting, blinking, enemy pathfinding, and later decided "ah, to hell with it" and just decided to try and recreate the whole game mode.
I think this ended up being one of my more polished products [especially considering how recent it is compared to my other works], and has a few maps and game modes, but they aren't what I would consider to be "good", or even "finished". I would love to pick this up and add more content and replayability, but that'll definitely be when I can finally get a reliable team.
If you can take anything away from these infodump posts, it's that while you certainly can do everything, you almost always should not.
/// Hostile Takeover ///
--- Let Us Start The Game! ---
Platform: Windows
Game Engine: Roblox
Genre: Card Game
Game Jam? No.
Sole Developer? Yes.
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For some brief backstory, around late 2023 I was visiting a friend's house for his birthday. The size nor contents of the party are important, but what is important is after all of the festivities had died down and it was just maybe five of us seated around a table around 1:00 AM, sharing a drink and a discussion that led to the inevitable question of "so... what now?"
My response to this question was to take out a deck of cards and mention a card game I had recently been enamored with that was featured in niche low-budget indie title Persona 5 Royal.
The name of the card game is different depending on where you grew up, but was known in P5R as "Tycoon". The goal of the game was to shed all of the cards that are dealt to you at the start of a round, whoever sheds all of their cards first is the "Tycoon", next is the "Rich", then the "Poor", then the "Beggar".
We had a lot of fun that night, and the game stuck with me a lot, and it made me think that maybe this would be my first foray into making a card game.
So I did.
The mechanics of the game are all in place, and the game works mostly as intended with the ranking and points system, the card trading minigame between rounds, the special cards and their effects [8-stop, 3 of Spades reversal, Joker Wildcard, etc.], the card minigame even looks visually pleasing.
Overall, I'm really happy with how this one turned out [especially the logo that I taught myself Illustrator for], it's just that I didn't seem to learn my lesson from Ad Abyssum and became extremely burnt out around when I finished the initial card game. I dropped the project for a little bit and worked on school and something else in the meantime then got back into it and refactored some code then added what was missing.
Of course, though, it wouldn't be history if it didn't repeat itself ad nauseam. Shortly after I finished polishing the game, I got burnt out again after a really serious oversight on my behalf led to a memory leak which almost crashed 4 computers.
The game now should work fully and not cause any issues, even has some nice music courtesy of Roblox's music catalog. This is one of the few games I actually recommend you try if you have the party size for it.