Snowy Siege

Snowy Siege won 3rd overall of nearly 100 entries in Mini Jam 145 in 2023.

Snowy Siege was a game created in less than 48 hours by myself (Right) and Ryann Callaway (Left) with music from Quinn Eyman. It's a simple top-down arcade shooter and the restriction was inconvenient powerups, and the theme was Frozen.

My Role and What I Learned

I was the lead Producer, Gameplay Programmer, and Designer. I tackled everything in this game other than the art and the music. 

My two biggest takeaways after this project were to embrace the restrictions more and that you can never have enough marketing (at least when it is free).

 One of the other games in the Jam was called Midas Touch and I loved how well they incorporated the restriction. In this game, you had to platform from one side of the level to the other and then back. The twist was when you touched certain parts of the ground they would turn to gold and fall to the ground. This made for very unique and grabbing gameplay that made every move count. 

Marketing is huge for any game, especially Indie Games. One of the reasons we placed so high in this game jam is because the moment ratings opened, I went to other people's games, rated them, and left a nice comment. This was to get them to rate our games and leave higher ratings because of the kind comment that I left on their game. In game jams the more ratings you have the more likely you are to win as many people only get a few ratings for their games.

 Marketing of course becomes even more important when you are trying to sell your game. There are thousands of new games every year and you need to get people to discover yours. Without good marketing, even the best games are doomed to fail, and even mediocre games can crush sales goals with great marketing.