The games listed here are five of the seven games I made during my Game Design & Development class during my senior year of high school. In that class, we had to make six games in one week each, and then one larger game prototype in the span of a month. The first four games and final game prototype had to be programmed in Java with the Processing application, which served as an additional challenge. You can download all of those games here, for Windows or Linux!
Please note that you need Java installed on your device to play some of these games. Also, I have not checked the Linux builds of these games. Please reach out to me if something is wrong!
This was the first game jam in this class. The instructions were to make a game of "Footsteps", a simple game we played on paper and then had to develop in Java. I decided to make it themed around a semi-popular gambling anime, "Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor".
Our second game had much more relaxed requirements: we had to make a fishing game. I learned a lot about scope creep during this project, as I used a lot of dev time researching data on different types of fish to use for my game, and I ended up only using some of the data. If I were to make this again, I would focus on just the core mechanics and preparing the project to allow it to add fish data when it is ready to grow, instead of making as much content as possible at the very start.
For our third game, our challenge was to make an educational game. Our topic was determined by each of us writing something we learned last year on slips of paper, then each drawing slips to make a game about that topic. The slip of paper I received just has "Java" written on it, so I made a game to teach variable declaration in Java themed around a coffee shop (the pun was irresistible). I had learned from my previous project and vowed to make a complete simple project instead of an incomplete complex one, and I was successful in that goal.
Our fourth game had a requirement similar to our first, in which we had to make a digital replica of a board game that we were provided in class. This project required the use of the Graph data structure, and we had to figure out a lot of edge-cases to make sure our program never ran into any unexpected consequences. I focussed solely on this goal, and I was satisfied with my final prototype since I was the only student in the class whose prototype followed every rule of the game. However, the game itself was not very well designed, so asside from the technical accomplishment this is one of the more underwhelming entries in this set.
Unlike the single-week game jams, we had a full month to complete the final project and it had to be paired with a game design document that detailed plans for a hypothetical full game that would be much larger than the submitted prototype. I designed a strategy RPG that subverted the genre by adding rhythm game elements, as the units controlled by the player used instruments instead of weapons. I fell into old habits during this project, making a prototype with a huge scope (I basically had to make two separate games and connect them) and an original song that I composed and recorded. I was not able to complete everything I wanted for this project, as the enemy units have no AI and I only completed two of the five player units that I wanted. Still, I am proud of how this prototype came out, and I want to make a more advanced prototype one day.