The Wraiths of Dumra — A Reflection
by Andrew T.
Intro
Hi there. I'm Andrew. I haven't introduced myself before, and Jake has been awesome enough to set up this blog to allow us to post updates. Towards the end of the Jam, I've had a lot of self-reflection about Wraiths, and game development in general.
A bit about myself beforehand: I've made a couple minor games in the past (they do not really count as full games—no lead or project management, though one was published to the iOS store). I've also dabbled in c# here and there over the years but mostly work in VBA at my "day job." So, to start using Unity and working on complex c# systems was a learning experience to say the least.
It Has Begun
We started off in the concept phase mostly knowing what we wanted to do, and all of us were excited about having the setting be in a fantasy world we've been working on for decades.
We paid careful attention to scope creep, knowing that 40 days would fly by faster than we expected. We wanted to have a tutorial intro, random events, and multiple different tiles. Early on, we realized that it was still outside our scope.
Even as we tried to slim it down, as the weeks went by, we realized we still dreamed too big. We had to knock a few things off the board to allow us time to finish the game from A to Z. In hindsight, trimming earlier and harder might have given us more breathing room.
Team of Three
Collaborating with each other has been our dream for years. We each have our own disciplines, strengths, and weaknesses.
I feel like we naturally fell into a rhythm that worked really well for us. Terra knocked it out of the park with the scene design and the Gaquk (the goat). Jake has been wonderful as a project manager, senior dev, and approval man.
He was very patient with me while I worked through a lot of coding conventions (I still have a lot to learn!). At one time, with 20+ comments on a PR, I said "release me."
Overall, I’m pleased with the way we were able to complete our goal.
Scope Versus Reality
There were so many times I really, really wanted to “finish” a few textures and songs. I kept thinking “It’s not good enough!”
That, in turn, was the hardest part of it all—deciding what good enough meant for a game jam, and when to call it done.
Towards the end, as our board dwindled down, I noticed I wanted to just get it over with. It came to that point where I said, “I'm good. This element is good enough.”
Forty days was a great timeline to work on everything (even while juggling my full-time job), but it definitely had an all-consuming effect. A lot of things in real life were put on hold because of this. At that point, we’d already cut a lot of items, and the dreaded deadline was fast approaching.
For instance, we had some issues with our latest build on submission day, and the blood decals had to get removed. I had to accept that certain things take priority when you’re racing the clock to finish.
The Software Gauntlet
Most of my day-to-day work lives in VBA, inside Excel spreadsheets. Stepping into a full IDE and starting fresh was disorienting at first. It felt like I've been working in a cubicle and suddenly got thrusted into a spaceship.
Let alone coming from Unreal, Unity’s workflow felt like learning to speak the same language with an entirely new accent.
During this jam, I juggled a lot of different programs. I know Photoshop decently enough to do what I want, but I was also able to play with 3D Coat and Substance Painter. That came with it's own challenges with an entirely new set of hotkeys to learn. I had to stop myself from watching 4 hour long youtube videos so I could finish my board item.
Learning the hotkeys between just those three was challenging enough; adding Blender, 3ds Max, Cakewalk Sonar, and Git on top made for some serious mental gymnastics.
I ended up creating a document to house useful hotkeys, shortcuts, and coding conventions. That helped a lot. I still had plenty of muscle-memory keystrokes that almost sent me into a stroke.
There were moments I enabled some mysterious feature and had no idea how to turn it off.
Despite the chaos, it reminded me how powerful it is to know a bit of everything, and how humbling it is to realize how much there always is to learn.
Learning Curves
This project really made a jack of all trades out of me. From sound design to modeling, animating, UX/UI design, and everything else, it was a challenge trying to do them all.
It was fun and interesting, but I can see why solo devs take a long, long while to create anything meaningful. I think the thing I struggled with most were Unity-specific issues like, “Where is this located?” or “Why is it doing this?”
Learning best practices with Unity was tough at first too, but toward the end, I really got the hang of it.
Ink-ing Around
Ink. Inky. Inkle.
I’d heard about it a few times, seeing it in games like Dear Esther. I always liked the storytelling aspect and how "easy" it seemed to be able to incorporate stories with branches.
While this project was small, I thought Ink would be a perfect fit for some of the dialogue. In fact, it turned out so well I used it for all the different endings, stats, and NPC dialogue.
This was a bit of a learning curve too, because I was just getting started with c#, and switching over to Ink was extremely different.
I really love narrative games, and as mentioned, the game I'm working on happens to be like that too. I appreciate this jam as it gave me an excuse to put Ink to use and see how it blends into game engines and the game itself.
The “It Clicked” Moment
The first couple of weeks for us went well. We were excited, churning out code and items fantastically. A lot of grayboxing was involved.
For myself, I had my own scene where I put galaxy-textured cubes in which acted as snow piles. From simple planes and boxes, Terra arrived with the terrain. And wow. With that, she did the lighting, snow, and overall feel of the game.
For me, that moment loading into the stage and just being there while the snow came down around the player really made me say, “Yep, this is our game.” I was so proud of all of us, and we still had a long way to go.
The next moment was the audio. I created all the songs and sound effects (minus an edit of the healing spell) and was able to throw them all together. I can't take credit for the Glimmerstalker audio, Jake did that!
Getting those in there really made the game feel alive.
I believe the overall consensus is that the Stalking Theme is our favorite.
Emotional Lows
Coming from a very inexperienced dev background and working with two people who have years of experience humbled me a bit. I’m not used to being in that position and haven’t been in many years.
While I took everything in stride, there were times where I just couldn’t get it, or I felt extremely incompetent. It made me frustrated that a lot of the work I did had to be redone. Not because it was bad, but because how we implemented it changed.
So, it wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong, but it still felt bad. Jake and Terra were great and able to reassure me I was doing well.
Then came submission day.
We had everything hooked up, wired, dialed, and tuned. As we were getting the latest build up to the web, it turned out it was broken!
Jake spent a good amount of time trying to figure it out, and I couldn’t either. With about eight hours left before submissions were due, we decided to call it and pull the last best branch we had that we knew worked.
So, in crunch time, I had to redo everything I’d done in the past week—as did Jake. That definitely put a damper on the spirits.
And as of right now, our web build still isn’t complete how we had it before. I am currently working on it, but as I’ve often said…
Good enough.
In the end, I realized that being part of a dedicated team means trusting the process, and that even setbacks can lead to better versions of your work.
Reflection and the Next Horizon
While we had to restart a bit, it still felt surreal to see it working and public. It felt raw, and I felt a great sense of pride in it.
I looked at it and said, “I built that.” Not the whole thing, but collectively, and that was emotional for me. It’s been a long 40 days, let alone having work and life in the middle of it all too.
Having finished everything felt really nice.
I still want to make games. I still want to explore multiple pipelines and tools, to continue my learning. Naturally, I do feel some burnout. I’d like to be able to relax, recover, and take a breather before continuing my own journey.
I am pleased with the team we had and would love to participate in another Game Jam…though perhaps next year.
A lot of this has been a learning experience, and now that I have one game under my belt—officially—it won’t take me as long to understand the core concepts behind all these different toolkits.
And hey, I have my shortcut sheet now too!
So, after all that, in short: I enjoyed myself. I love my friends. Nothing catastrophic happened (until the end), and we still came out on top. We finished a game from start to finish, and I couldn’t be prouder. Plygith Dune has been a dream of ours. A world we’ve been shaping on and off for years and we finally brought a piece of it to life.
That accomplishment alone feels rewarding enough.
Game development is hard, messy, and deeply rewarding, but seeing something you’ve only ever imagined come to life makes it all worth it.
Every snowflake we placed, every sound we mixed, every bug we chased. It all added up to something real. And that, for a first full game, feels like magic.