About me!

Hello everyone,

Since I'm rather new to the Audio Game community I thought I'd introduce myself properly for anyone who is interested in knowing who I am and how I got into making audio games!

So to to start, I'm a sighted developer that lives in the state of Utah in the US that uses Game Maker Studio.

I've been a hobbyist game dev since I was a young teenager, I remember still being in elementary school trying to figure out how to make a little ball move through tunnels! I was not very good back then. For the last 7 years I have been working in coding/QA. But it was in medical software, so not nearly as interesting as this. 

I first wanted to make an audio game that is blind accessible probably two years ago, but didn't have the ability to dedicate the needed time!

Back in May I got into having a lot of free time, so started doing a lot of game jams! I did a number of practice games before taking on the challenge of making audio games.

Then in June I began working on my first audio game! I made this for a jam:

https://ericbomb.itch.io/music-clicker

It wasn't particularly good, but I was able to prove to myself that I could make audio games! It also let me meet a number of veteran audio game devs and helped me make some friends in the community that have been so helpful in my attempts to make Audio Games! I made some friends in the audiogame.net forums and found the Audio Game Dev discord, where people were so supportive and cheered me on to make better and better audio games. 

So I began making audio games with the idea to practice and get better! I made 8 small audio games for Game Jams in total up until now. 

Highlights of those games:

1st in concept, 8th overall in Major Jam https://itch.io/jam/major-jam-4-cosmic/rate/1160835 With it being a week long game jam and over 140 entries I was blown away that people adored my incredibly unique game.

2nd in Audio, 10th in concept in Brackey's Game Jam https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-6/rate/1172596 Given there were over 1700 entries for this jam I couldn't be more proud of this result. I got a not great overall because I came nearly dead last in Graphics, but that is just another badge of honor for an audio game I decided!

With each game I was focusing on specific mechanics! If someone were to play all my games (Don't do it, some of them are bad) I would hope they would see me learning as I went! I tried out different ways of navigation, I tried out different ways of handling audio in the back end, of how to deal with indicators, of how I wanted to generate voices, ect. Every game I tried something new, or tried tweaking something showed in a previous game.

But a tiny piece of every game ended up in TierraMon, so I hope the practice was worth it! 

So when the Crunchless Challenge Jam started I realized it was perfect timing for me to finally start in on my first full project! So I hope I do a good job and by the end of the game it's something everyone enjoys! 

Right now there is a very early demo available for anyone that wants to have an influence on development! There will be bugs, there will be mechanics that don't work right, and balance hasn't been attempted yet. But anyone up for playing and giving feedback is greatly appreciated!