I dont have a current-in-development project right now, as what I'm working on is a purely solo thing but it's very much in a beginner state as I learn Unreal Engine (so, there's nothing I can actually show yet), but I can show a prior thing, if you might find it interesting.
This was years ago, but it is the big project that I was involved in. Here, have a look:
This game is called Starward Rogue, it is a roguelike that is heavily based on The Binding of Isaac, plus bullet hell elements because that's what I do.
My role in the project was a few things: A: design most of the bosses and some of the enemies, as I was the only one on the team capable of doing the more "heavy" patterns (AKA, I had enough experience and knowledge of the design elements of bullet hell shmups, and enough skill to handle extremely high-level play in games of that type). Second, I handled the balancing of the rooms that made up the levels... much like Isaac, the procedural floors were made of individually hand-crafted rooms that were stitched together. Most of the rooms were not of my design, but I had put a major rule in place for the game, which was that the game must never generate a genuinely undodgeable attack/pattern for any reason. So enemy category placement and selection needed to be such that combinations of enemies that could produce that situation would not happen. I cant describe how bloody irritating this was to do.
And lastly, I was given a lot of control over the project, which was quite the novel experience. Normally, I tend not to think that I can be in any sort of position that would allow me to make decisions about what others could/should do in any situation, but once placed in that position with this project, I became very commanding and tended to just abruptly decide things for/about the game that werent necessarily within my specific design abilities, since I had the most understanding of both genres (shmups and roguelikes). It was very interesting, I never knew I could be like that. And the content I created myself was simply done based on whatever I felt was a good idea at the time, with nobody directing anything I did. I was not however the one truly in charge of the project, I was just allowed a lot of control by him.
It was contracted work, and the third thing I'd helped with for this developer. The previous two things being work on expansions for a totally different game. The funky thing about all this is that prior to that, I'd never done game dev work before, and only had a college degree that was frankly useless for this. The guy in charge of that dev team knew me at that point though as I'd taken part in many beta tests for their previous games, and as I tend to get involved in forums, I'd gotten to know many people there and spoke often of my interests, which included games of the genres involved. The strangest part was what triggered the contract offer.
Usually you'd expect that contract offers would be based on things like prior work experience or college degrees or stuff like that, but no, it was A: my constant ramblings about the genre, and B: this video:
And of course, the fact that everyone there had gotten to know me well enough that they felt I could work well with them.
The best part? The guy in charge was one of the most understanding, caring people I've ever met. When the contract was offered I was hesitant to accept, feeling that my autistic traits would get in the way, but no, that's not how it worked. Instead of being like "hey you gotta do at least 40 hours a week on this" it was more like, "hey, I understand... just do however much you feel you can handle each week. If that's only like 12 hours a week or something? That's fine, I know you'll make good stuff". Seriously, these guys were great. Even just in normal scenarios of talking to them on the forums and such, they were accepting of me, including my gender issues that were slowly starting to show. And the guy in charge never pushed anyone on the project to crunch or anything. Rather, he only pushed himself, to the point where the rest of us often worried about him. But hey, he loves his work, so it all worked out.
Whole thing was a dream project for me, I'd wanted to make a game since I was a kid, and never thought I'd be able to do it. But it happened!
So these days, I've been heavily inspired by that experience to finally dive into full solo development. Not of roguelikes though. What I'm intending on making is horror games. The sort of screwball short ones that are often found over on Itch. The decision to do that was inspired by a weird little game called "Spin To Win". Just like a 20 minute experience, but for some reason it clicked hard with me. And a later game called "At Home Alone Final", the only horror game to TRULY disturb me, sealed the deal for me. So that's what I'm looking to make, is horror games. Once I actually have something to show, I'll be sure to share some of it on the forums here.
There, I'm done rambling.
