For me, Game Jams are a great way to try new things, develop new skills and practice working within scope to a tight deadline!
Blind Bake
Global Game Jam 2024
Made with: Unreal. My role: Technical Design, Level Design & 3D Assets.
Blind Bake is a small experimental game built to showcase audio navigation through 3D levels. It hopes to teach gamers and developers some basic methods of guiding players without sight through spatialised audio.
This was another journey into Blender creating more refined assets for this jam and improving my efficiency with the tool. The most important role was designing the levels themselves with clear progression. This was intended as more or a teaching tool therefore each level had to introduce a different challenge to navigate; not anything mega challenging, simply a basic action requiring the use of audio beacons to guide a player through it.
Find out more about the design process in this talk At Global Accessibility Conference 2024
Hole in None
GMTK Game Jam 2023
Made with: Unreal. My role: Technical Design, Level Design & 3D Assets.
This is minigolf but with a twist, you play as the course; controlling obstacles, to prevent the ball from making it to the hole with the goal of getting the biggest score possible!
My core design decision was to give the players enough creativity with how they control the obstacles to vary gameplay otherwise each level would have a consistent “meta“. This was also an initial explore into Blender creating basic assets for the whole jam.
Pageturner
Epic MegaJam 2021
Made with: Unreal. My role: Gameplay/Level Design & Programmer.
Pageturner is an interactive narrative with a roguelike twist, created for the Epic Megajam 2021.
One of the biggest challenges was working within the constraint of the page size/shape. As the page fills with words it reduces the play space, so it was important that all the levels had a vertical top to bottom flow which still allowed the player to progress no matter how far down the page the player is pushed.
Find out more about the design process in this interview by Game Developer:
Hello You
Global Game Jam 2021
Made with: Unreal. My role: Gameplay/Level Design & Programmer.
Hello You is a cute 3D constellation puzzle game about fallen stars. Align the constellations to finish each level. Hello You was made for the Global Game Jam 2021, with the theme of "Lost and Found".
I used this game jam as an opportunity to learn more about using cameras in Unreal to dynamically frame the areas of the level as they “grew”.
The Box
Global Game Jam 2019
Made with: Unity. My role: Gameplay Design & Production.
The Box was made for the 2019 Global Game Jam, with the theme of 'what home means to you'. We created three mini-games, involving a timed gathering puzzle, memory puzzle and pirate shoot 'em up. The main challenge was creating three unique-feeling games that were small and digestible, we were able to do this through visual theme and variety of mechanics.
The Box is about being a child; just a cardboard box and your imagination can allow you to become an astronaut, a pirate or a survival expert!