Ice 'Em

Ice ‘Em started as a week-long challenge, but due to the holidays it was more like three days. Three people, one weekend, and a concept inspired by Worms — you take turns, throw things, and try to freeze your enemies before they freeze you. I came in as lead programmer and built most of the codebase from scratch over that single weekend.

After the jam wrapped, I liked the game enough to keep going.

The Jam Build

Game jams are a different kind of programming than anything else. There’s no time to architect cleanly — you make decisions fast and live with them. My job was to get core systems working and integrated before the time limit ran out.

I designed the player controller from scratch: movement, turn sequencing, input handling, and action validation all had to feel right immediately or the game wouldn’t be worth playing. Alongside that I built the enemy AI, giving enemies the ability to track the player and navigate around level obstacles. The game state manager handled turn flow, win/loss detection, and score tracking. On top of all that, I coordinated with the team’s artist and designer to integrate every visual and audio asset cleanly before submission — in a jam, broken asset pipelines kill projects.

Post-Jam Development

Continuing solo after a jam is always interesting. the codebase that was “good enough for 72 hours” has to become something you can actually build on. I’ve been expanding the level design with proper tilemap-based layouts, refining how enemies move and react, and adding mechanics that didn’t make the jam cut: items, and a thin ice system that makes the battlefield itself a hazard. It has mainly been on the back burner until recent due to coursework.

Current Status

Actively in development. Planned hiatus May 2026 for summer break and work. This is a personal learning project and not intended for public release.