Overview

Developing Willy Walko's Sci-Carnival required sitting in front of a laptop, writing, coding, drawing, and budgeting time.

The bulk of the work was completed over spring break of 2022. While completing my tasks, I came to understand how much pressure I can work under and how far I've come since I developed my first game one year ago.

During the process, I was easily overwhelmed by the size of the task ahead of me. Me? Complete 5 minigames inside of one big carnival game? Firstly, I learned that I needed to set bite-sized goals so the pressure is broken down into more manageable amounts. This also involved axing parts of the game to save time and prioritize content quality. For example, a multi-level physics game and plushie machine was removed from the game because they called for a lot of pixel art. Art was the most time-consuming aspect of this game since a lot of ideas were niche and couldn't easily be replaced by a royalty-free asset pack.

Next, I reflected on my progress during break times. It was then that I realized that the speed that I completed each prototype and bug fix much faster than before. A minigame that would've taken me at least two weeks to complete now took two days. Also, I had a much more structured system when I began using the GTD method* and multiple planning documents to separate tasks from references. The variety in the genres of games that I had experience coding was also expanded with the addition of platformers, shooters, and trivia games.

Since the science topics targeted elementary schoolers, I did not gain new information from this experience. However, I was able to figure out ways I can incorporate the complexities of high school science into digestible content for elementary schoolers so they weren't finding the games verbatim of what they learned in class.

Overall, creating this game was stressful but also rewarding. Much of that was thanks to the support I received from my peers.

*Recommended to me by Mary Gerik, a cool game producer.