Kenechukwu Umelo
Technical Designer
AI Programmer
Game Jams
As a designer and programmer, I think highly of game jams. They’re a good way learn, collaborate, and stretch your skillset a bit. The final product is very rewarding at times, and they teach me so much. Each game below carries significance to my journey and lessons that made me a better developer.
Dungeon Divers (2023)
Role: Game Programmer
Time of Development: 1 Week
Team Size: 6
Engine/Tools: Unity | C# | Trello | Miro
Jam: Brackey's Game Jam 2023.2
Game Overview:
Dungeon Divers is an endless, top-down 2.5D shooter where players fight through layered encounters against multiple enemy archetypes to earn keys that unlock stat upgrades, allowing progression across runs.
The catch? The enemy's difficulty increases with every level.
I focused on spawning systems, enemy AI, and dynamic tutorials.
Gameplay Footage
Contributions
Level Spawning Systems
I implemented a simple generator that creates a new floor when the player destroys a level. Testing with the team, I ensure that the system can withstand potential button spamming of new floors.
How could I have improved it?
A pooling method would've been a better-performant approach for the game, rather than destroying the floor at runtime.
Enemy AI and Spawning
Implemented a spawning system to handle enemy spawning, key placement, and property values for difficulty scaling. I opened up several float variables for designers and artists to tweak and test throughout the development cycle.
For the enemy AI, I scripted all the movement behaviors and several types of weapon bullets for them to wield. The enemies were designed to offer players surprise mixed encounters at each level, preventing them from becoming stagnant and predictable.
Tutorial
Near submission time, I quickly implemented a dynamic text-based tutorial on the first floor to guide players through the game. The intention was to bring players up to speed on how to play without requiring additional menus or panels.
Restless (2023)
Role: Game Programmer
Time of Development: 1 Week
Team Size: 3
Engine/Tools: Unity | C#
Jam: Pixel Game Jam 2023
Game Overview:
Restless is a 2D Horror Narrative Exploration where players explore up and down the halls of a house during a dream sequence.
I focused on interactive objects and narrative scripting.
Contributions
Interactive Objects
I scripted each object in the house with a dialogue string input to deliver to the dialogue manager to display. My goal was establish the storytelling for the area that the player is roaming. My partner (for the jam) and I were able to add lines to several different objects in the house scene without too much haste or coding.
Player interacting with Dialogue Prompting Objects
Narrative Scripting
I added simple event trigger volumes to the areas in the rooms that players will run into, which triggered cutscenes, noises, or objects that needed to auto-animate. This was done to bring out the horror elements in a way that will surprise players. Here are some examples: