I wanted to share with you all an update as to my post about the Fireside game jam!
posted: August 26, 2026
updated: n/a
I wanted to share with you all an update as to my post about the Fireside game jam! I mentioned that I really wanted to continue making the game I prototyped during the Fireside Game Jam… and I am. I am making this for real. I have brought on a wonderful team of collaborators and have been working on this as time permits since exactly a week after the jam ended.
I am overhauling every system. Nothing about the way the code handles anything has stayed the same. It has been super fucking complicated but I have loved every second. I literally made a whole new Unity file, almost no code was copied over. In some ways this made my life easier, cause lemme tell you that code was a mess. In other ways, implementing these systems in more complex and realistic ways and actually coding it correctly has been rough lol.
I’ll be upfront I haven’t had much time. I have had an unexpected move back to Richmond and lots of responsibilities to keep up with. But I am so excited to be working on this with an incredible team.
Here’s (to me) the most fun part. All I am doing is the coding and making everything work together. Everything else, every song, every 3d model, every UI element, every voice line was done by my team with me giving them general direction. I am exclusively director and coder, nothing else. I love collaboration and this bit of it has made me so happy! Y’all truly the people on this team are a joy to work with and I’m so glad I made this collaborative. They’ve had so many wonderful ideas I would never have thought of.
When it comes to being the leader of a team and the one making the decisions, one thing I've really worked to do was follow the standards I would want my own project lead to follow if I were on a project. Fair contracts, understanding, ability to see how my work is influencing things, etc. I have worked on projects like this as a voice actor or sound designer, pretty much everything involved in making a game I have dabbled in, and it taught me a lot about the perspective of the team. What I have never had was the perspective of the leader. A challenge I didn't anticipate was managing my own productivity on this game while also leading a team and keeping track of their progress on their goals. My team is 9 people including me, all with their own schedules, paces, and ways of doing their work. Me, two musicians, a 3D artist, a UI artist, a sound effects person, and three voice actors (one of whom also is doing concept art). I have pretty bad ADHD, and it's hard enough sometimes to keep myself on my own schedule, let alone conflicting schedules of 9 different people. That is the kind of role I have never been in before and am really trying to adapt to.
I’m also always falling more in love with the concept of this. As someone who has been in childcare, it’s such an interesting thing to try to translate the experience into game form. I'm obsessed with the idea of juxtaposing sweet, bright visuals and music with rage inducing gameplay. How many times have I experienced this exact dichotomy myself? How many times have I sat in the brightest, happiest rooms with twenty children who all need different things and need them RIGHT NOW? There is so much balance you have to maintain and I think that’s ripe for a game concept. It’s also been so nice to engage a creative part of me that is also intrinsically logical, I always make my best work when my creativity has constraints. I have to follow rules in coding, and it’s nice.
Right now the game is in very early development. Systems are breaking and many systems that will be in the game in the future are not even started yet. Hell, the kids are still cubes and the player is still a capsule. By no means does that mean there has been little progress, I have been spending that time putting tons of effort into invisible systems and incorporating the wonderful assets my team is making, but it doesn't look polished right now. A strong foundation is being set, and that's what will make the rest of this easier even if it's not motivating looking at the same cubes for hours. But it’s coming and I’m very excited! More to come (including a very very basic test build) soon!