Chyma and the Toll of Time

Chyma and the Toll of Time is a game developed through Champlain College’s senior capstone program with The Game Studio — a student-run development studio that ships real titles. I was added to the team Sand Storm Studios mid-production as a generalist programmer, which meant getting up to speed on an unfamiliar codebase fast and finding ways to contribute without slowing anyone else down.

My Role

Being brought on mid-project was a deliberate challenge I wanted to experience. In a professional setting, you rarely get to start from scratch — you inherit systems, conventions, and tech debt. On Chyma, I had to learn what existed before I could add anything new.

My contributions ended up spanning several areas. I implemented and tuned enemy AI, building out the state machines that governed how enemies patrolled, reacted to the player, and escalated aggression. I also worked on general obstacles for the game, such as the ball and horizontal platform and making sure the player interacts with them well. Outside of feature work, I ran community-facing playtesting sessions and through that playtesting, worked through player-reported issues with bug report spreadsheets and forms systematically across iterative builds. Around 200 bugs were found and fixed by the time of release.

Working in Agile

The project ran on a full Agile/Scrum pipeline throughout — sprint planning, daily standups, backlog grooming, and retrospectives every cycle. It was my first extended experience with professional-style project management, and it changed how I think about sequencing work. Breaking contributions into sprint-sized pieces made it easier to communicate progress, catch blockers early, and avoid the kind of late-stage crunch that sank other projects I’d been on.

Release

Chyma and the Toll of Time is available free on Steam.