Saturday, August 24, 2013

And So It Begins...

Well, after months of Michelle Rakar trying to convince me to start blogging, I finally gave in and made one. I'm not sure if I have much to say that people will be interested in reading, but I guess it's a good way to keep track of what I'm working on. I'll try to post on a somewhat regular basis... but no promises!

I suppose I should start by talking about a few things I've been doing lately. I just got done with my summer job at iD Tech Camps in Lake Forest, IL. I spent the summer instructing kids who are interested in pursing a career in game design. I taught FPS design with UDK, intro to game design with Multimedia Fusion, and my personal favorite, roleplaying game design with RPG Maker VX Ace. It ended up being a really fun experience, and I got to meet a lot of great people, both staff members and campers alike. The hours were pretty demanding at times, but at the end of the day it was really rewarding to have such a positive impact on these kids' lives. 

Unfortunately that didn't leave me much time to work on my project with Hyrax Games, but we are really coming close to completion on that! It's a conservationist themed word-puzzle game called The Amazing Jungle Rescue. We've got a couple of screenshots up on the website, so check it out! Most of the work on the game is pretty much done at this point, so it's just been a lot of testing lately. I'm super excited to say that the game will probably be released by the end of the year, so look forward to it.

Lastly I recently left my position at Brrapp Games. We parted ways on positive terms, so there were certainly no hard feelings there. Brrapp has a bunch of wonderful people so I wish them the best of luck on their future projects. Right now they are hard at work on Spanda Ganda, a 2D platformer that I played a big part in helping develop. Keep an eye on their website for more news on that - they should have some cool new announcements in the near future. 

Well I suppose that sums up most of what I've been doing these past few months. As always, I'm hard at work on updating my portfolio so feel free to have a look at that. I'm currently looking for work, so if you're curious about what I can do, that's the place to look. I'll probably have a couple of new additions to the site in the next few days. Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read my first blog post. Hopefully there will be a lot more in the near future. See ya next time!