Project Overview & Postmortem

Language: C#

Tools Used: Unity, Aseprite, paint.NET

Platform: Windows

Role: Lead Developer, Environment Artist

Overview: The Spirit Warrior's Quest was a game made for the 2021 GMTK Game Jam, using the theme "joined together." In fitting with that theme, the team (consisting of me and my now-husband) came up with the idea of a "spirit warrior" that could separate spirit from body and use either form to solve puzzles or take part in combat unique to the tangible or incorporeal self. I programmed the mechanics for the game, including the spirit/body separation, the key pickup, and the enemy interactions, and I also created the tileset and backgrounds.

Postmortem: If I could give any piece of advice born from this project, it would be to never have any expectations of winning/placing in a game jam, let alone a jam as large as the GMTK jam. I foolishly believed our visuals and concept was enough to secure us a high ranking, but that was not the case at all. (A major factor was that of visibility, since the rankings in that jam were based on votes; a team with a large network would certainly get more votes than a team like ours with little connections.) Game jams should only be entered for fun or for experience; otherwise, you risk being left with a sour taste in your mouth if your game does not perform as well as you expected.