Mourning Wood/Grave Intentions - Unity

ROLE: Lead Designer & UI/Character Programmer

Our Jamsepticeye game jam! The prompt was 'Death is an Opportunity', this is a game about infiltrating a funeral and making terrible (or impressive) decisions, all to impress a girl attending the ceremony.

TEAM SIZE: 6 Members - 1 Designer, 2 Programmers, 3 Artists

PROJECT TIMELINE: 5 Day Game Jam

Takeaways

This project ended up being compiled into a game with other top games from the Game Jam. This required working with other developers in order to create a seamless experience, and also match appropriate audiences. Since I have always made games with my close friends, it was a very new experience having to adjust the project to meet the requirements of a secondary group of people who will be accessing and modifying the project.

I learned a lot about finding fun even in very simple, or in some cases, bad design.
There were areas of this game that were intentionally hard to wrangle, or control, which typically feels terrible in a game, and whilst they did feel terrible here, using our setting, narrative and feedback to inject humor wherever we could, we transformed these 'poorly' made sections into funny, enjoyable and endearing segments.

WHAT WENT WELL?

Gamifying not just a funeral, but trying to pick up a girl at a funeral was a super fun experience. I think it allowed for us to go wild with our ideas and really put fun and humor first and foremost.

Scope was managed incredibly well. On paper a 5 day game jam, with 7 minigames within it sounded absolutely daunting and terrible. My team and I managed our scope amazingly well and worked within our means.

WE CAME 4TH! I think my team did an amazing work on all their respective parts, and we all worked together incredibly well to turn this absolutely stupid idea into an actual videogame.

WHAT WENT NOT SO WELL?

This was my first time doing a large amount of programming. Thankfully the programmers on my team were amazing and helped me a lot, but if they found themselves busy, or unable to help, I would've been stuck far too often and far too long.

We leaned very hard into the silliness and absurdity of the game, which led to us naming it 'Mourning Wood', we failed to consider we might actually do well and this would end up both on Jacksepticeye and DuckyDev's social media. We had to change this to 'Grave Intentions' to be more appropriate.

The rhythm game was biting off more than we could chew. We very quickly rescoped and worked within our means but it was far too ambitious for a short Game Jam.

Synthetic Fizz - Unity

ROLE: Lead Designer

Our Global Game Jam 2025 game!
The prompt for this project was 'Bubbles'.

In this game you must fight against robots to take back a building they have overrun. Unfortunately, the only weapons you have on hand are carbonated drinks. Shake them up and fire away!

TEAM SIZE: 4 Members - 1 Designer, 1 Programmer, 2 Artists

PROJECT TIMELINE: 2 Day Game Jam

Takeaways

Level design is HARD! Trying to lead the player, surprise the player, be forgiving etc etc. There is a very fine balance to be made, and this balance can be completely disrupted by the location of just one enemy, or the height of just one wall. I learned a lot during this project but I'm very happy with how it turned out.

TAKE INSPIRATION! This game turned out much better due to the fact that we leaned incredibly hard into our inspirations. We took our favorite parts and added to them or adjusted them to fit our needs.

WHAT WENT WELL?

The game plays exactly as I envisioned it when making it. It is very inspired by Hotline Miami, and I feel like we did an amazing job taking exactly what we wanted from our inspiration and implementing it.

We took a very inconvenient spin on an FPS. You have to physically shake your mouse to 'arm' your drink weapons. Despite being a really weird gimmick, I believe we did a great job making it fun!

We got noticed! We did a great job creating a unique experience with this game and because of this we got to showcase at GamesPond!

WHAT WENT NOT SO WELL?

Level Design! This was my first time designing a level with enemies, cover, platforming and weapon placement in mind. It took a lot of iterating and could have been much better.

Audio Implementation! Much, much harder than we anticipated, but very important for a game like this to feel good. We worked it out a bit too late which left the audio a bit underbaked.

Crosswalk Crunch - Unity

ROLE: Lead Designer & UI/Character Programmer

Our Brackeys Game Jam game! The prompt for this game was 'Risk it for the Biscuit'
In this game you play as a girl scout trying to achieve the final scout badge required to become the best girl scout ever. She needs to make cookie deliveries in the most dangerous town imaginable.

TEAM SIZE: 5 Members - 1 Designer, 2 Programmers, 2 Artists

PROJECT TIMELINE: 6 Day Game Jam

Takeaways

The biggest learning experience from this project was scope management. I largely failed to manage scope well in this game and we didn't quite meet the Jam deadline because of this. I had factored in the amount of people we had working on the project, but not their overall availability. I then failed to put my foot down and adjust scope when we weren't meeting the deadline.

I am very happy with this project as an overall learning experience for myself and my team. This was my first time even touching C# in Unity and I learned a lot in making this game. Since I was hands on with programming, I got a lot more experience in game feel and feedback. I think given a few more days, this game could have been a genuinely great game.

WHAT WENT WELL?

The 'juice' and feedback in this game turned out really well. I spent a lot of time adding small details like camera shake, particles and audio to every action of this game, it taught me a lot about just how much you can add to a game with these aspects alone.

We pulled off an art style we had never done before! I think the visual identity and style of this game came out really well and it fit the theme in a great way.

I think that despite scope issues, we worked very well as a team. Everyone supported one another amazingly and we turned this project into a fantastic learning experience despite missing the deadline.

WHAT WENT NOT SO WELL?

SCOPE! This game wasn't scoped appropriately, and I failed to notice this and adjust accordingly until it was too late!

I had a hard time trying to find a way to gamify 'Risk it for the Biscuit' in an interesting way. I acknowledged risk is an essential element for the majority of games and I didn't want to create an uninspired interpretation. I am overall happy with what we landed on, but iterating to get to this point consumed too much time.