Beholdin' Ur Dungeon
July 2023 - July 2023
“Beholdin’ Ur Dungeon” is a game about the futility behind being a Dungeon Boss. In no game universe does the Final Boss ever win, and this is no exception. While the objective of this game is to defeat heroes and stay alive as long as monsterly possible, the final result is always defeat. This game was supposed to be a submission for the 2023 GMTK Game Jam, and was constructed within a 48-hour period. The game uses entirely unique/handcrafted artwork, music, sound effects, and code, all of which was constructed within the Game Jam’s 48-hour period. At no point during development were AI tools used to construct, test, or design any aspect of “Beholdin’ ur Dungeon.”​
This project was my first game jam project and though my team and I were unable to submit it on time due to some build error via Unity, it was awesome working with a team and making new friends while cramming to make a game that actually looked really polished and function pretty well. Though there were some features we could not get working correctly as I joined the team half-way into the time limit, it came out amazing nonetheless. I feel proud of my team and myself for managing such a significant task in a 48-hour period.
Skills Used
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Unity Engine
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C#
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Play Testing
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Microsoft Visual Studio
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Github
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Itch.io
Postmortem
Q: What challenges did you overcome?
A: The challenge we overcame was getting a playable and mostly polished game in general done in a 48-hour period of time. This was my first game jam and I had never done anything like this in terms of a time-crunch and just pushing ourselves as much as we could to really try to get it done in time.
Q: What challenges did you fail to overcome?
A: We had a mechanic using the timer, the next wave, and the spawning system where we were supposed to show the player which hero was coming next, and the timer was only supposed to start once the wave was finished. Thought we tried really hard to get this working we kept running into bugs that would stop it from functioning as intended and in the end had to let it go in order to try to submit the game in time.
Q: How has this affected your project?
A: This affected the project by no longer showing the player what hero to prepare for and rather just deal with the luck of the draw which I feel makes the game a little more difficult but fun nonetheless. You can really just think of it as a feature where you don't know what's coming and you have to get lucky enough to survive.
Q: What could you have done to avoid these issues?
A: In this particular situation it was really just bad luck that I ended up not joining the team until 24 hours into the time limit as they previously only had one programmer and it was a lot easier to get through the game with the both of us. We stayed up until 5am trying to get as much done as we could, as the deadline was at 12pm CST. Had I found the team from the beginning I feel we may have gotten everything working as intended.
Q: What is something related to the project in terms of progress or productivity that you were extremely pleased with?
A: This project I feel helped prepare me for working with other teams in terms of the time-crunch and the collaboration on mechanics and how to best implement those mechanics. It helped me understand a bit better what kind of stress can come with game design and helped me find ways to manage the stress better and my time management. Along with this preparation and teamwork, it also helped me find new friends and teammates I could work with on future game jams or projects and actually get to know some other programmers, artists, music makers, etc.
Q: What is something related to the project overall that you feel went well?
A: Overall, though we were unable to submit to the game jam due to technical difficulties, it was still an amazing time with some amazing new people cramming to build a whole game in a 48-hour period. Though there were things we did not get implemented, we worked tirelessly to get everything done that we could manage. I also made some really amazing new friends and look forward to working with them in the future.