Jake D. Ruth

This game was completed during the Ludum Dare 49. The theme for this Game Jam was "Unstable." In order to incorportate this theme, our team decided to make a game where the tiles on the map were erratic, or unstable. The floor tiles constantly move and flip, making it hard for the player to navigate.

My role on the team was to handle the player controller, and the tile-spawning system. For the spawning system, tiles spawn on the bottom, upside-down, on an existing tile. Then after a short delay, the tile flips along a random cardinal-axis, despawning the original tile that is now on the bottom. Additionally, I implemented a way for the designer on the team to create a weighted list of tiles, that way the tiles are not completely randomly picked. These tiles ranged from decoration to tiles that contained enemies or pick-up items like weapons.

This game was completed during the Global Game Jam 2021. This year's theme was "Lost and Found." We decided to implement this theme by creating Lost at Sea, a puzzle pirate adventure game. Your goal is to sail the ocean searching for islands that seem to appear and disappear on a whim! These elusive islands contain a lot of valuable loot! You can land on any island and dig for buried treasure. After disturbing the island enough, Poseidon reclaims his land. Watch Out! There are pirates that want to take your gold! Keep them at bay with your cannons!

This game was created during Miz Jam 1. There was no theme for this game jam, but instead all participants work with the same art asset to create a game. Over the course of a week, each team was only allotted 48 hours to work. Due to prior obligations, I was only able to log roughly 24 hours.

Off The Rails is a top-down shooter with a twist. There are rails that players can hop on and ride around levels and can only get off at designated points. This introduces some puzzle aspects as the player needs to navigate around a maze and alter the path of the rails on the fly.

This project was created during the Global Game Jam 2020. The theme was "Repair", all about fixing stuff. Our team decided to interpret the theme as pairing up things again. (re)Pair is a puzzle game about Noah's ark breaking down and having all of the animals get loose. It is up to the player to re-pair all of the escaped animals, again. This is done by pushing the same breed of animals together, but watch out! Some animals just can't fight their urge to eat smaller prey. Avoid bringing tasty snacks near these animals, like crocodiles and snakes. Other animals just don't want to move. They would much rather wait around until food comes to them than be pushed by the likes of you. You will come across several challenging puzzles and find various pick-ups along the way.

This project was developed during a 48 hour game jam. It is a rail shooter where the object is to shoot as many targets as you can, and as quickly as possible. Currently, there is only one level with two gun types. I focused mainly on the camera movement, the gun controls, and the art.