At the end of last summer, I participated in the Buddy Up Jam: Summer 2022 as a 3D artist. The theme of the jam was “Legend” and I was excited to see what we could come up with as a team.

The programmers in my team chose to use the Godot game engine. I had never used Godot but I figured that wouldn’t be an issue since I wasn’t leading the programming part.

We started brainstorming ideas and finally settled on a game where you play as Big Foot. The player would need to gather food and stay hidden from people hiking through the forest. It was an exciting concept, but as the two-week jam progressed, I started to get a little nervous about how slowly we were progressing. I was busy creating models and textures, but with only a couple of days left, we were still missing core gameplay features.

With about two days left, I decided to start a Unity project and use my created models to make my own game for submission. I decided to make a game where you play as Big Foot but you were a park service worker that had to pick up all the trash in the park without being seen by people. If anyone saw you, they would try to get a picture of you, and the player’s view would change to the camera. The player still had control of Big Foot and could try to hide before the picture was taken.

Although I was proud of what I accomplished in the two-day timeframe, I wasn’t happy with the fact that I abandoned my team. I felt like there was very little contribution from others, and there was no way we were going to have something to submit. In retrospect, I would have handled the situation differently and tried to communicate better with my team. But overall, the experience taught me the importance of teamwork, communication, and time management. I learned a lot from this jam and I’m excited to see what future jams have in store for me.

You can play it here: https://spacecastle.itch.io/bigfootserviceworker
Jam link: https://itch.io/jam/buddy-up-jam-summer-2022/rate/1741160