Artifact 1: Project Castle

Project Castle was the first personal project I ever created. It is a top-down, point-and-click RPG demo featuring combat, animation, and cinematics. Following a tutorial series, I was able to create a play area, build a control set, create state machines for AI, and use cinemachine cinematics. During this process, I learned a lot about what it means to drive yourself when there is no pressure. If I didnt make this demo, I wouldn't be fired, I wouldn't get a failing grade; it just wouldn't exist. But when it came down to it, my passion and the desire to learn pushed me through and I made a small demo that I am proud of the look and feel of.

Artifact 2: Dragon Ascent

Dragon Ascent is an interactive comic book built in unity by myself and a group of 3 other students. Our objective was to tell a story around the prompt “The universe is an illusion created in the mind.” To do this we built several layers into the storytelling of the game. The first is the reality of the villagers, who believe the dragon to be real and live in fear of it. The second layer is the reality of the hero, who knows the dragon is not real and was created by the villagers. The third level is the game reality, where the hero, the villagers, and the world are not real and are constructs for entertainment. The fourth level is the 3D reality, where the player of the Dragon’s Ascent game exists and interacts with the game reality. The final level is our reality, where the reader of the comic experiences everything below, seeing how each layer interacts.

Skills-wise, this project pushed me, as it mostly revolved mostly around art. However, we were able to use an agile methodology to assign roles and built our team around the individual's skills. I acted as Scrum Master and lead programmer, creating the layout and functionality of the book, as well as the inbuilt gameplay sections where the player has control of the character. I learned a lot more however in the role of Scrum Master. Between school breaks, technology issues, and the different complexity of tasks, I spent a lot of the week messaging group members to delegate tasks, assist in solving problems, and providing feedback rather than doing direct work on the project. I had to grow a lot of my interpersonal skills to make sure that no matter what happened, my team knew we would be able to handle it.

Artifact 2: Blindsense

In Blindsense, you take the role of a blind person with the ability to visualize sound using echolocation, and you use that ability to help navigate the world. The player is not only challenged to navigate through a post-apocalyptic world, but also to use their echolocation to solve puzzles and uncover hidden secrets. The game mechanics revolve around the player's ability to visualize sound waves, and players must learn to differentiate between different sounds in order to progress through the game. One day, you wake up to find that everyone in your town has disappeared, leaving no trace behind. You ventures out to investigate and discovers that the town has been overrun by giant, insectoid monsters that attack any noises that they hear. Armed only with a heightened sense of hearing, the player must navigate the treacherous streets and alleys to uncover the reason behind the disappearance of their town's residents. As the player progresses, they encounter different types of monsters that respond to different sounds, adding an element of strategy to the gameplay. As the player delves deeper into the mystery, they begin to unravel a sinister plot that involves the monsters and their connection to a failed military experiment that has wiped out most of humanity. With each discovery, the player realizes that they are the only hope for humanity's survival. Utilizing their unique abilities, they must gather a group of survivors and lead them to safety, all while avoiding the deadly monsters that now roam the streets. The immersive sound design and atmospheric visuals create a sense of tension and suspense, making Blindsense a truly unique experience.

Blindsense was a challenging project for me, as it was the first in which I took a drastic redesign of how games usually play and tried to convert it into gameplay mechanics. I spent a long time learning shaders, altering Unity's render engine, and creating unique gameplay ideas taht would sell this idea of seeing sound. The main challenge for me was going blind into the project, as I had never seen osmeone create a game that was almost entirely dark. Creating an intuitive and visually pleasing effect to cement this idea took many iterations, and even involved me scrapping an entire semesters worth of work due to a misstep in not backing up the project before I began making engine changes. I've since rectified this issue, and its a lesson I wont soon forget.

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