Project Development:

'Flaming Hot Skulls In Your Area!' was meant to be a game submission for the GameBoy game jam for 2024 themed around being "spooky" and having a style akin to games on the Nintendo GameBoy meaning I was limited to 4 colours and a pixelated art style for this project.

This project had me research and look at the idea of infinite gameplay loops of classic arcade games and I managed to conceive of a way to make an endless runner where you dodge spells from a spooky ghoul, the aim being a high score and greater distance in the end.

This game had the most dynamic production process visually and musically as it is one of the games where the sound effects and the audio was key to the functionality and cues for attacks. I made all the soundtrack and audio myself and the process took redrafting for musical sections as the loop had to be seamless as well as the music.

In the end this game could not be released as version one which I made with my co-developer Saif in charge of programming and producing was too late for submission. Instead of scrapping the hard work I remade the entire game again on my own hardware and added dynamic visual particle effects, SFX, enemy types, cutscenes and more that I thought would make the project shine!

I am very proud of this game as it is as fun to play as it was great to remake and tinker with. This game was even submitted to the 'Southampton Venture Fest' and the 'University of Southampton Open Day' events as a MAC and Windows port I made after its initial PC release! My game was in a joint collaboration with 'Drawn Out' so in many ways it was also one of my first professional presentations in a high-class gaming event!