Untitled Trick-or-Treating Sim

Inspiration

The Halloween season is my favorite time of year, and I will always find things to enjoy about it, but I feel like it'll never be the same since I'm too old to go trick or treating. This game is for all the other nostalgic adults like me out there who long to once again wander around their neighborhoods in disguise begging strangers for unhealthy food. In addition, this game is dedicated to my best friend Ellie, who is constantly working her hardest to bring the Halloween spirit to every day of the year.

What it does

Not as much as I want it to, but over the course of this hackathon I've realized I want to make this game in earnest and flesh it out into something I can one day share with the world. It deserves it.

How I built it

This game was programmed in Game Maker 2, a software I am slowly becoming more familiar with because of my desire to make 2d indie games. For lack of a paid art department all assets were sourced from the internet (with credit given of course to the best of my ability) with the exception of the main map which is a screenshot of my neighborhood on Google Earth.

Challenges I ran into

Time constraints and lack of assets were of course the biggest challenge, but another issue I faced was concentration. I care deeply about this project and tried my best to focus, but I have ADHD and struggle with completing personal tasks when outside of a very specific home environment. This is exacerbated when there are other people around and events going on around me. I've had an amazing time here at my first hackathon, but this is why I want to take this project home with me and fully flesh it out by myself.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

This is my first hackathon as mentioned, so I'm happy I managed to build anything at all! I've only been trained so far in writing Java from the command line, so Game Maker 2 has really been a chance to explore my skills on my own to do something creative.

What I've learned

I learned so much about Game Maker 2 during the making of this project even if my actual UI and gameplay is quite scant. It's a very straightforward to use engine since there are no 3d aspects to deal with, which is very good for beginner amateur game developers like me.

What's next for Untitled Trick-or-Treating Sim

Ideally, I'd like to build UTTS into a real game (with a real title) and my own original assets and release it on a platform like Steam or Itch.io. Money would be nice too, but it's not really an objective. I want to get my name out there.

Built With

• gamemaker2
• gml