When I was still working at Five Mountain Hardware in Shickshinny PA (shameless small business plug), my coworker Michael and I were both very excited to learn game development and explore what was possible. We spent our lunches watching Unity’s tutorials, GDC talks and Mark Brown’s Game Maker’s Toolkit videos.
Our first go at making a game together was during the itch.io My First Game Jam Summer 2017, which had the theme of “Dreams”. We threw together a crude platformer called Wobblenaught’s Dream Machine. It was a fun learning experience, and I really feel like it wasn’t that bad for one of our first attempts at making a game.
In the game, you had to collect cogs to make the platforms activate and progress to the end of the level. I threw together the art, music and sounds quickly to just get something playable, and Michael tackled the level logic.
We had a lot of fun, and we were starting to get a bit more familiar with Unity. After brainstorming a bit on what our next project should be, we decided on a bullet hell.
Jimmy’s Wild Rocket Ride is an arcade style bullet hell with multiple types of enemies, power ups, and a functioning high score leaderboard. We published the game on Newgrounds in November 2018, winning the Daily 2nd Place award the day after uploading it.
After JWRR, Michael and I had thought of some ideas for our next project, but we unfortunately haven’t had the time to work on anything else together. I ended up transitioning to a new job doing virtual reality development for a local business shortly after that time, and Michael was a bit busier with family life and fatherly duties.
We did, however, end up deciding on a name for our game development “company”: Reclaimed Studios. Hopefully we’ll get to use it eventually.
