Heya, my name’s Ani! 

With Santa’s Secret’s patch coming up soon, I wanted to share my journey so as to inspire any of you who have that same burning desire I have: to learn every little bit of the game development process there is. 

Santa’s Secret was my first project for Small Loan Studio—and I wanted to impress. There were many that were working on the project that knew their stuff beforehand, or were just starting out but had so much talent in their portfolios already—I felt intimidated! Yet, I wanted to be as helpful as possible. I knew that if there was anywhere that I could begin satiating my curiosity, while at the same time being the extra hand I wanted to be for everyone, it was here in this project. 

My solution?

Dip my hand in every process I could! 

Understandably, this can be seen as someone being unfocused, undisciplined to a single particular skill, but I saw it as this: proof that I was flexible, and could fit wherever I was needed and was capable of handling whatever came my way.

I ended up editing dialogue, creating asset lists, learning some coding, implementing content into Ren’py, attending meetings, and answering questions to those who couldn’t attend. I would even listen to team concerns and bring them up to the necessary lead. For the patch, I conceptualized storyboards for the new cutscenes that were beautifully illustrated and brought to life by my friend Naj.

It came to a point where my friend Andrea, the creative director for the project, gave me the title of Lead Generalist. I was thrilled and happy to be given the title—and I realized then how treasured someone who thrives to learn can be in environments such as Small Loan Studio. 

So, what I mean to say in all of this, is to never be afraid of wanting to know everything, or trying to be everywhere all at once—if you know you can handle it, and if you can balance the scales right, you can be the next treasured generalist in your project, whether that be in games or other such jobs. 

Know that you can do it, and you’ll be fine.