My First Game Jam:

I restarted developing games in Unity back in August of last year. Game development has been in the back of my mind since I was young playing my favorite games (RPGs like FF8, Arcanum) though. It's something that I've constantly attempted to start in my 20's but for some reason or another I just gave up before truly even starting. 

I'm now in my 30's and uploading this game to itch had me wondering what made this time different? What pushed me develop something, finish it, and put out to the world, warts and all? I think the answer to that is that I stopped thinking about the future. 

Every time I started learning game development in the past I would get to a difficult spot, bash my head against to wall to fix it, actually fix it, and then feel lost and discouraged. Like, if I had to so much trouble with this small issue, imagine when I get to the real difficult parts. Then I would start thinking things like "I'll never get good at this" or "I'll never get paid to do this". Self-defeating statements.

This time around I had no expectations. No goals other than work a little every day and don't take it too seriously. This time and just focused on the problem right in front of me. I made it this far, and maybe one day I'll get those things I wanted when I was younger, but I try not dwell on that too much.

The Game:

Gauntlet is a 2D arcade style action game in a top-down perspective. The goal is simple: kill as many skeletons as you can before you are overwhelmed. There are only 2 powerups/pickups, a health potion, and an "Ultimate" gem that wipes the entire field of enemies for you. I made it simple on purpose. My dream game to make is a complex RPG with many systems and a very complex battle system. I've decided that if I'm ever to get to that point, I have to start simple. Make smaller games that incorporate some aspects of this dream game. This is the first step since I want my game to have a top-down perspective. I tried to focus on making the game fun and satisfying, while also leaning into the top-down perspective. I paid really close attention to animations, sprite sheets, tiles, etc. (not the art, I’m using found assets and I’m not an artist, but the process of turning a sprite sheet into an animation , etc) In that way, I think I accomplished everything I wanted to. I feel like I can step into game 2 with the knowledge I gained here and make the next one even more complex.

In the end I learned a lot, but the games not perfect. Which leads me to..... 

Potential Updates:

Some people have played the game and gave me feedback (wow, I still can't believe people were at all willing to even click the link). The biggest piece of feedback I've gotten is that they don't like that my character snaps back to the down position when idle. I think almost everyone who has played it and gave me feedback has mentioned this so I'll be working on this first. 

I also think the game could use a pause menu. I've never done this before but am exploring how to do it in Unity.

I've also been made aware of 2 bugs:

• Sometimes if you stay still a skeleton will walk up but not attack! -  I think I know what's going on here and think I can address this.
• UI Scaling /UI doesn't scale at all! - This is a rookie mistake. This is actually the first game I've ever really made a build for outside the editor, so I never even thought about UI scaling being an issue. Someone has graciously showed me how to fix this in unity so I can address this.

Anyway, if you've made it this far, thanks for listening to me ramble. If you tried the game, pretend I'm giving you a virtual hug as thanks.