1. Hi there! What's your name? Want to introduce yourself?
Hi! I'm Rain (she/her), and I'm super excited for this!
2. Did you participate in the last jam we held? If so, what do you plan on doing better this time? If not, what's your reason for joining?
I have not done a game jam before - I may have signed up for some things, but am terrible at following through and have never actually attempted one. I'm joining this time because I'm on break and therefore will actually have time to dedicate to doing this.
3. What games are your favorites? Did any of them inspire you, or made you want to make your own?
Super normie answer but whatever - I love Breath of the Wild, it's gorgeous and has amazingly fluid animation and the way you interact with the world feels so solid and coherent, and the world is designed so that you actually want to interact with all of it. Obviously that's a huge game by a huge team, but it is inspiring in terms of a having a world that both feels real and is designed to draw people to interesting things. Also, he visuals are inspiring, as is the fluidity of controls. It certainly inspired me to look at some of the how it was done stuff - the following are fascinating (first on level design, second on tech/engine)
https://medium.com/@gypsyOtoko/this-is-a-reposting-of-my-twitter-thread-summariz...
https://www.resetera.com/threads/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-the-technical-analysis...
4. Do you have experience with game development? What did you do/with what engine?
Essentially, no. I've done a tutorial or two in unity, and that's about it. However, I have experience with several aspects of game dev - I have a lot of music experience, with some audio editing and limited composing, I have a background in traditional art and have modeled a few things in maya/blender, I've taken a couple of cs classes. So basically, I have very intro level knowledge about lots of parts of making a game, but have never put them together.
5. Tell us about something you're passionate about!
I'm not sure if this is passionate per se, but I'm super into Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast focused on telling meaningful stories through an interactive game based method. I also love playing music and singing a whole bunch.
6. What are your goals for this game jam?
My biggest goal is literally to finish something. I above all want to have made a complete, playable, thing. I want to make a game from the ground up so I know what the steps are and what goes into it and figure out what parts of it are most interesting to me.