DanSim: The Devlog

I joined this game jam having only really followed tutorials up to this point. I figured that if I really wanted to be able to create my own games, at some point I'd have to break out of the comfort of tutorials and create my own game without following a step-by-step guide. I'd heard about game jams in the past, and always wanted to do one, but I've never felt like I'm at the point where I'm "good enough" to participate. Thankfully, this game jam came about at a very convenient time when I was recently finishing up with a tutorial series I was following, and I had a vague idea for a kind of game I'd want to do. 

When I found out the theme, I knew I wanted to do something having to do with becoming bald, as that is a "change" in the main character (Dan)'s life. I really enjoyed the Spiderman and Power Rangers games on the SNES, and that was a huge inspiration for the play style of this game. Even if it's not pretty, the mechanics aren't polished, and it's just in general not "perfect," I knew this was a project I could complete in two weeks. I got to work right away, and would spend at least a few minutes every night after work developing the ideas, art, and programming for the game (which was made in Unity), and a bit more time on my days off between schoolwork. In the past I had started projects that had way too large of a scope for my experience level, so I was very careful with the planning for this project, utilizing a Trello board before switching to HackNPlan. This made it very simple to track my progress, and determine what I could and couldn't do within the time limitations, technical limitations, and the limitations of my own abilities.

So this is what I came up with! DanSim: The Enbaldening. A man's quest to find the Golden Razor and become bald. I'm very excited that I was able to FINISH a project that I started and developed completely on my own! From the (sub-par) sound effects, to the (sub-par) music, and even the (sub-par) sprites, I made this game from scratch. And without following any tutorials (though there was plenty of Googling involved).