Deciding to join this jam, as recommended by my friend Emii-Soft. If you care to listen at all; sit back, relax, and grab a snack as I tell my story so far, and my hopes for the future. This is why the Decade Jam is important to me. I don't think anyone really cares, but here's my text wall just in case.
I've been an aspiring game dev ever since I was eight, and in that time (I'm turning eighteen this year) I've already evolved and changed so much. Even comparing my games from a few years ago to now, they've sky-rocketed in quality (still not good, but hey). Not just in technical skill, but in themes, and even as a person.
I can't wait to look back in the 2030s at how much I've grown and changed over the decade, and this jam will be fantastic for creating milestones and all that. I'm also excited for this opportunity to see how my fellow devs grow, evolve, and ultimately improve over this decade of comradery.
I suppose I should start at the beginning (at least, the earliest I can remember).
I've always wanted to make my own games, but of course, I started small. I'd mess around with debug-mode in the old Sonic games, and eventually also moved onto Super Mario fan-games where you could build your own levels. Many hours spent on those. Super Mario Flash, Super Mario 63, and Super Mario Bros. X were all great (Bare in mind, Super Mario Maker was still several years away at this point. I did end up getting it, and I spent a lot of hours on that as well.)
Soon, my desires began to grow. I wanted more, so I began looking into game making tools. Around 2011, I stumbled upon Sploder, a social site of sorts with a couple different flash-based engines to create games with and post for people to see. I dabbled with it for a few months, then made an account in 2012 (https://www.sploder.com/games/members/alexanderolmsted/). This is also around when I got into Minecraft, but that's another long story for another time.
Sadly, I can't recall my earliest creations on the site. My account got hacked, and they deleted all my games. I tried to get them back, but site staff weren't helpful. I ended up moving to a new account (https://www.sploder.com/games/members/alexman25/) where I continued for the rest of my time. I ended up posting a lot of games. More than a hundred, in fact. None of them were good, but I tried.
My fondest memories on there was of two series. The first was Knuckles' Quest for the Super Rings. A Sonic the Hedgehog fan game where you played as Knuckles, if you couldn't guess. My first original series ever (I think, I don't remember if I finished any on my old account) is Adventure Master (Yes, I know there's already a game by that name, but I didn't know at the time). It started as a Zelda-inspired dungeon crawler for the first two entries, and ended up as a """Metroidvania""" type game by the end.
On the topic of Metroid, that's what really kickstarted my creation spree. Around 2016, my best friend of about five years (still my best friend to this day. Let's call him Ran) got me into Metroid. He'd always play as Samus at recess when we played "All in One" (a game we created where you could be anyone you want), and later "All in One Brawl" (think Smash Bros). The "All in One" games were inspired by the "All in One Scene Creator", which actually only featured Mario and Zelda assets. On the topic of scene creators, I hated Scratch because all the scene creators there sucked. That'd become pretty ironic later on.
So, I download a Gameboy Advance emulator on he and I's Chromebooks (school issued), with ROMs for the Sonic Advance series, Metroid: Zero Mission, and Metroid Fusion.
I'll admit, I sucked at the game. I was never a very good gamer (I only specialize in a few specific games. Zero Mission, today, is among those). But, it was a blast. It kicked off my latest obsession in the form of Metroid.
Barely a few months later, I discover MAGE (Metroid Advance Game Editor). It was a program created by Biospark for the purpose of editing both of the GBA Metroid games (I think I found out about ZM hacks through Metroid: Deep Freeze by Captain Glitch). I almost gave up after I had issues doing anything beyond text editing. My first hack, HECKTROID, was only text edits with a few things I accidentally changed. I had tried ROM hacking both Mario and Sonic in the past, around 2011, and it seemed nothing had changed. It was still over my head.
Figuring out how clipdata worked, however, was the first of many epiphanies I would have on my journey to become a game developer. Everything always seems so hard for a while, until one specific thing finally clicks, then your skill and knowledge increases ten-fold as you are now able to apply that knowledge to other situations, and use your newfound common sense to figure out other obstacles.
I was an immature brat on the MAGconst and Metconst Discord servers. I constantly broke the rules, didn't listen to people, and all that. It took me getting banned to finally start instilling some change. That, as well as with the help of one of my teachers at the time (Thanks, Micky-Dees), did wonders for improving my maturity. I'm still not really where I should be in that regard, but I've improved. (I got unbanned a couple months later)
I've worked on a few hacks over the years, all of which I love and cherish the memories of, but the only one I've really made progress on is Metrod: Return to Zebes. It was originally started as a Super Metroid remake in ZM (something a lot of people have attempted both before and after me), but spiraled off into its own thing. While technically "released" in 2018, I still work on it frequently. While not the best, I do have a soft spot for the project. It has gotten a couple unfairly negative reviews (I say unfair because of them not actually completing the hack), but aside from that reception is positive. (https://metroidconstruction.com/hack.php?id=393)
This is also around the time (2017 now), I started dabbling in my arch nemesis, Scratch. Of course, being me, I made Sonic games. A couple serious, and a few not (The Seenux Thee Hejham series). This is also where had one of those epiphanies, finally understanding variables.
Scratch, as it turns out, would become extremely important for me. This is where what's currently my best original game series started.
You see, Ran (best friend from earlier) and I have a peculiar sense of humor. It's very rawr x3 random, and still is. We were sitting in English one day, doing one of our favorite jokes at the time. Replacing random words in sentences or phrases with other inside jokes we have.
For a while now, we started calling each other shrubs (we used to say scrub due to MLG memes).
Ran: "Shrub."
Me: "I am NOT a shrub."
Ran: "YOU ARE."
Me: "Oh, by the way, I've been considering playing Shovel Knight lately."
Ran: "Shrubble Knight."
Then, it happened. In an instant, Shrubble Knight was born. I vowed to Ran that I would make Shrubble Knight during that class period as a joke.
Shrubble Knight: A game where you play as a knight who slays shrubs. Shrubs grow on the left side of the field, you slay them to gain money, which you spend on upgrades so you can kill shrubs more efficiently. There are multiple kinds of shrubs. Ran for example, suggested a red, exploding shrub with a hyper-realistic (we were making fun of Sonic.exe) explosion. The goal of the game was to get enough money to fight the Giant Shrub (which had stolen Star Wars music during the boss fight). (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/244760741/)
The game was a bit bleh and clearly unpolished, though it set the ground work for a lot of what would become of it later.
Shrubble Knight 2 came not long after. Ran and I thought it would be funny.
"Hahaha, wouldn't it be hilarious to make a sequel to Shrubble Knight? The MEEEME game?"
Well, I put in some more effort. To our surprise, it actually turned out okay. The prototype I had finished by the end of algebra was actually not horrible, and was a big step up from the first game. This is also where a lot of the series groundwork was set.
The knight got a minor redesign. The half purple half black play-field of the first game was interpreted as purple grass under a night sky.
Now, the timeline of Shrubble Knight development gets weird from here. I've gone back and tweaked, polished, and added things to the old games even as recently as January of last year.
The game's scope increased a bit. You had to even fly through space to an entirely new planet to fight the giant shrub this time. This was also the first game in the series to introduce the main (at the time) antagonist. At this time he was just called the black guy (we didn't notice the potential racial implications until a while later. He's blue and wears black armor. He'd later come to be called Somber Knight). He was super fun to program, even if he doesn't work that well. I ended up retro-actively including a more clunky version of him into the first game. (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/327637276/)
Shrubble Knight 3 started before Shrubble Knight 2 was even finished (yes, I did finish 2, later). This is when things stopped being quite in that wild-west do whatever territory, and the series started getting more grounded in its own lore. By this point, yes, lore started to arise, and I had very much stopped treating the series as a joke.
It featured a pseudo-3D playfield, yet another redesigned knight, and even NPCs. This one also ended up having the best boss fights, though I largely consider it the worst game in the series. It was ambitious, but I never ended up completing it.
A new character to the game, Jasmine, ended up taking Somber Knight's place as the "field ambusher". She never ended up returning anywhere else in the series, but the lore at this point couldn't have Somber out there because he was intended to take final boss Status.
It was about this time I went back and finished Shrubble Knight 2, I believe. I added stuff like the class system, and the true final boss. If you maxed out your money after defeating the Giant Shrub, you'd be transported to "Dracula"'s Castle. A Castlevania SOTN parody cutscene plays out, you try to beat the boss. Taking cues from Super Metroid, he strikes you down. The alien from earlier who took you to the other planet comes in, and you defeat "Dracula" by taking control of them. Not willing to go down without one last fight, "Dracula" summons large red shrubs to blow up the castle.
Shrubble Knight is dead. Series over, right?
Wrong.
The Shrubble Knight timeline ended up as a surprisingly complex thing. None of the knights in any of the games are even the same character as eachother, besides Somber Knight of course.
The timeline by this point went: Shrubble Knight 3, Shrubble Knight, Shrubble Knight 2.
I also retroactively added Prarchord to the game, a character who also started off as a joke between Ran and I (the forbidden word joke was one of our favorites. We've spiralled off into a whole "Forbidden lore universe", with a lot of stuff built up in our collective agreement).
This is about where Shrubble Knight 4 started, and "Dracula" was officially re-written into being Rarchord Grarchordson (another dude from the forbidden universe). Why him of all people? Well, I HATE Rarchord Grarchordson. There were actually two released Shrubble Knight 4s prototypes (none finished). One that's honestly one of my favorites to play because it feels so good (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/421114325/), and the other that's a cool tech demo of sorts (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/425059855/). We'll be focusing on the fun one here.
This one ended up having a mini-art style, and even had a cutscene at the beginning. By this point, a few things were established.
Shrubble Knight 2's overworld theme has pretty much just become the Shrubble Knight theme, and Shrubble Knight 2's boss theme has become the main boss theme. Shrubble Knight 1 and 3's music ended up largely ignored in the grand scheme of things.
As well, lore was firmly established. Somber Knight was the first Shrubble Knight's brother, and worked for Rarchord Grarchordson. Rarchord was a master of dark-magic, using it to mind-control the shrubs (which are sentient and intelligent beings in this universe), and spread his corruption to expand the Grarchordson territory (denoted by purple grass).
There were more Shrubble Knight projects, but none really came to fruition. An rogue-lite called Shrubble Crawler, a mobile adaptation, and even an RPG.
I've had many other ideas besides Shrubble Knight, a lot of them being recent. I've actually pushed it aside now, other projects taking my time up. Cometon, Randomon/Majumon, and more. I do have huge plans for the future, though. If I end up making it, Shrubble Tale will be my magnum opus. I have huge plans for it, but no spoilers for now.
So, this is where my story ends for now. I've had a lot of projects over the years, and I've only highlighted some of the absolute biggest here. While there's a lot, this is only the beginning. I have a long journey ahead, as does everyone else in this jam. We're all going to chronicle our adventures together, our experiences, and how our game-development knowledge skills improved over time.
I post this so I can look back in ten years, and think to myself:
"Wow, did I actually thing Shrubble Knight 2 was good back then? Shrubble Tale blows any of that out of the water."
I'm gonna build up a catalog of fun times I'll never forget. This is the first step in my journey as a game developer, and as a person. I'll look back on all my accomplishments, my passion-projects posted over the course of a decade-long game-jam with a smile.
But, alas, this has been my story. The story of my game development journey.
This! This is merely the prologue! And today, my friends, I finally step with you into chapter 1!