I’ve worked for a number of companies over the years as a programmer. My time at government contractor was particularly interesting. It was like working in a different parallel universe where everything looked the same but was strange. Unlike the commercial sector, we didn’t worry much about deadlines or being first to market with an idea. Our struggles revolved around protecting the funding for our contracts. We had fought against bad Project Managers that would mismanage team resources. We fought to keep bad programmers from ruining code. At the end of the day, there was the threat of the government swooping in to take away our funding. No funding meant no job.
We joked that all of this sounded like a old video game. Something like Missile Command for the Atari 2600. The evils of the world trying to destroy our project while the lowly employee fought to defend it.
It sounded like a good idea but my skills as a video game developer were lacking and Unity hadn’t become the giant it is today for indies. Fast forward 10+ years and I decided why not try to see what I can do in a week. I busted out my notebook and sketched a rough idea of what I envisioned.
I faced some interested challenges along the way but after a week, I had something that was pretty fun.
I really enjoyed taking a break from working on big projects to make this game. It was very helpful showing me some holes in my game design knowledge. Give the game a try and let me know what you think.
