PCA Legacy

I've spent the last four years working on a whole lot of projects, and learning to code. Over that time I've made a lot of games, and my skills in programming and game design have evolved.  I've put this page together as a personal archive and explanation of every single one of these games ordered in chronological order.

Don't want to read, just want to play games? Skip to the bottom of the page for download links.

2017	Ross Bob	Lilliam Pumpernickel
2018	Lilliam Pumpernickel 2	Tutor The Hot Anime Girl Math Game	Lilliam Pumpernickel 3	Afterlife
2019	Archangel	Phantom	Boiling Point
2020	Phantom II	Alterbend	2020	Phasmothievery
2021	Lilliam Pumpernickel 4	Tidalsoul

2017

Ross Bob

Ross Bob was a project I worked on way, way back around October 2017 I believe for a codeday. If you're unaware codeday is an organized event where participants make games within twenty four hours. It was the first codeday I ever attended, and the first game I had ever made, so it definitely came out rough around just about every edge it has. Luckily I wasn't alone, although me and my good pal, William Keinanen stayed up until 3 AM to get it done in time, others such as Ryan Serrato, Yessica Jimenez and Linus March helped out on the project. Overall though even if it isn't the greatest thing that I've made, I think it's simple, yet fun platformer, and I look back on it with a lot of nostalgia for that night we made it.

Lilliam Pumpernickel

Similarly to Ross Bob, this was another game made for a codeday. Originally the idea came from William Keinanen who joked about making the a game about Lil Pump battling his way through soundcloud rappers, and we actually ended up making it. It was made in collaboration with William Keinanen, Linus March, Yessica Jimenez, Chandler Durham, and Kaiden Martinez. I did the vast majority of programming on the project, and in the end I remember being very happy with the core mechanics of moving and shooting. Looking back on it now, this one definitely has it's problems. The enemies are too fast and their patterns too hectic and the player controls horribly. That being said it's still a  fun game too look back at. P.S. You may wonder why this game and Ross Bob are programmed in the weirdest aspect ratio possible, so much so Windows has to manually change the ratio for your whole display. That's because we actually programmed both of them on a virtual machine running Windows XP, because at the time we believed that was the only way to get GMK8 working, which isn't true at all.

2018

Lilliam Pumpernickel 2

One day, Chandler Durham and I were speedrunning the first game during a particularly boring lunch, trying to get the best times possible, when a thought came to me: "Hey, this game is actually pretty fun. If I had more time I could make it into something way better." Thus, I started working on a remake of Lilliam Pumerpnickel, not in Windows XP this time, which eventually grew to such a scale I decided it was more fitting to call it a sequel. The game was significantly more complex than the first, with checkpoints, particles, better healthbars, multiple weapons and actual player health, albeit it barely worked. Linus March and Alex Aaujon-Johnson helped out with a few sprites, but I ended doing the vast majority of work on the project. At the time it was the hardest I had every worked on something, and I was proud of it. Looking back at it now, it's better than the first game, but still has a ways to go; it's just too hard and poorly balanced.

Tutor The Hot Anime Girl Sim Math Game

This one was made for a math deliverable back in freshmen year. William Keinanen and I had the genius idea of making this ironic mess. It's basically just a poorly programmed quiz game, where you answer the questions. Looking back on it, it's not that great to be honest, funny though, and it definitely shows how much I've grown as a programmer and game designer, and I know this for sure, as to extract an exe of it, I had to go back into the old source code, and wow that nearly made me gag.

Lilliam Pumpernickel 3

I made Lilliam Pumpernickel 3, for a number of reasons, for one it was my Maker Faire deliverable,  but more importantly I wanted to prove to myself that I can make something better than the second game. Overall, I just wasn't happy with the reception I got from the second game. I realized it was just too hard and not a lot of people that I showed it too, had fun with it. Because of that, the third game was significantly easier, and more forgiving with checkpoints placed every level. Furthermore I completely redid the aesthetic of the game, cause I just wanted to find something more interesting than a gray brick dungeon. Looking back on it, I still think it's pretty fun still, albeit it looks worse than I remembered. P.S. You may notice the game just kind of ends at a certain point. This is one I never ended up finishing, and I doubt I ever will, which I slightly regret as I look back on it, but at the time I had wanted to move on to another project. P.S.S. You could probably notice from the screenshots, but this is the first game I made in a proper aspect ratio.

Afterlife

After a while of working on Lilliam Pumpernickel 3, I grew bored of the top down shooter format and wanted to move onto something more ambitious and interesting, hence I started Afterlife. The game is an NES Legend of Zelda style RPG where you explore the open world, find secrets, collect items and fight enemies. It's got smooth transitions between screens, a day and night cycle and a whole host of secrets to find. Looking back on it, I still find it really fun, albeit the lighting system is terrible. Another issue I have with the game, is the fact many areas just end, as in there's not another room you can progress onto, which is because the scale of the game grew to such a point where I felt like I could never finish the game, hence I moved on. P.S. Alex Aaujon-Johnson helped me with some of the spritework.

2019

Archangel

This one was made for my final deliverable for sophomore year and was a collaboration between me and David Schweidt, who did a lot of testing, marketing, and such. This game actually started as just a demo of an environment I made to test my skills. I wanted to design an area that felt much more alive and beautiful, so over the course of development I put a lot of work into giving every little detail attention, and movement, and looking back it, the environments look really beautiful. The main flaw in my eyes with this game is the combat system. I tried to make something similar to that of Afterlife, but after countless hours of work, I just could never get the combat feeling right. Furthermore I never designed sideways walking animations for the player, well I tried, but I wasn't happy with any of them I made, and I definitely think that's something the game is lacking. Overall though, I think this project was instrumental in forcing me to design more interesting environments for my games.

Phantom

I made Phantom for a software development project in junior year. The criteria was to make a text based adventure game that utilized object oriented programming. In the end I think what I made was pretty impressive. It's got fully connected overworld map, multiple playable characters, plenty of items and stats, and a dynamic ATB-based combat system. It's quite a short game, but I think it's still fun and was an important step in learning to be a better programmer. The fundamental lessons I learned in designing this game are stuff I still use to this day.

Boiling Point

Boiling Point is a farming sim game I made during junior year for a project in Mr. V's class. I originally pitched the idea as Stardew Valley, but post-apocalyptic, I ended up not really making it all that post-apocalyptic as I instead decided to focus on implementing satisfying and well thought-out farming mechanics and in the end I think it's  a nice prototype of a farming game. You have multiple tools you can use to clear out your field, and many crops to plant and grow. This was also the first game I made in Gamemaker Studio: 2. I ended up moving to a more modern IDE, as I really needed some less archaic, but that meant there was a lot of learning I had to do with the new engine.

2020

Phantom II

I made this one over the summer in my own time to try and build upon the foundation I set with the first game. I really liked a lot of the ideas I had, and thought that I could expand and implement them better if I had more time. Phantom II ended up being a too ambitious project for a text adventure, and eventually I ran into the issue of the game simply being too big for visual studio to handle, and because of that a lot of ideas I had never got implemented. That being said I think it's a fun text adventure, it's got an ATB-battle system, multiple characters, lots of equipment, side quests, status effects, crafting, fishing, a full soundtrack, and a ton of other stuff. PS: For this one to run, you're probably going to have to download and install java.

Alterbend

This was a pretty small prototype I made in my spare time when senior year started. I originally planned to do a lot more with it, and someday I might, but for now it's a simple prototype I used to try and improve my skills. I wanted to accomplish a couple of things with the demo, foremost I wanted to focus on creating very polished core gameplay loop, hence I spent a lot of time on making the enemy A.I. unique and interesting, as well as making the shooting mechanics dynamic and fluid, but I also wanted to get more used to GMK2, as I was still pretty new to working in it.

2020

2020, not the year that's the name of the game, was an interactive journal type game I made for the first investigation this year. I wanted to take the journaling we were doing in IDL and turn it into an interactive experience, hence I made a game all about exploring environments, reading the journal entries I wrote and using them to solve puzzles relating to the themes of the content inside them.

Phasmothievery

Phasmothievery was a game I made for the second investigation this year. For my deliverable, I choose to enter into a game jam, specifically the Mix and Game Jam 2020, and create a game based off the jam's theme, in 48 hours and then have it submitted to be judged and get feedback. It was a really fun and useful experience actually. I spent most of those 48 hours doing nothing but coding, and in the end I made a fun and simple shooter all about exploring an abandoned house and fighting ghosts. I ended up placing around 200/600 entries in the jam, and got a lot of useful feedback on how I could improve my skills in the future.

2021

Lilliam Pumpernickel 4

Lilliam Pumpernickel 4 is a game I've been working on for a while, almost a year now, in my spare time. I started it as a joke, thinking it would be funny to bring back Lilliam Pumpernickel again, but I ended up really enjoying working on a top down shooter again, and I had a lot of ideas for the project, so I decided to expand the scope of the game, and work on a lot more levels, enemies, modes and mechanics like dynamic lighting and such. Currently I'm not finished with the game, and there is still a lot of work I want to do on it, and the current build was made back on 4/8/21.

Tidalsoul

Tidalsoul is an real time strategy game I've been working on for my passion project. I wanted to make something that really pushed the limits on my skills and forced me into designing mechanics that were significantly more complicated than anything else I've worked on before, also I think RTSs are cool. At the moment the game is far from being finished, and only has four levels, as much of my focus has been on designing a competent RTS engine that has things like good unit selection, unit movement, unit production, resource gathering, combat, structure creation, fog of war and control groups.