I'm a big basketball fan! I'd happily sling balls at hoops all day long if I could get away with it. So, when the chance came to merge basketball into a jam, I took it. First Person Shooter (FPS) was made in a little over 24 hours for Ludum Dare 41.

While the game itself is quite simple, I tasked myself with creating a clean, well presented and complete game in the short timeframe. I had fun experimenting with colour changing techniques and learning how to synchronise materials and UI elements across a Unity project.

To The Moon was made for my (then baby) son. It's a high contrast, endless, procedural animation with basic interactions, colourful effects, simple sounds and a gentle soundtrack.

Made over the course of a weekend, I used To The Moon to experiment with a few mathematical concepts for use in my classes and as some recreational development time. As a big bonus, it was nice to sit down and see the happy reaction from the little one when it was finished! This was also the first time I'd published to Google Play with a project made in Unity.

Bleep Sheep was made on a Ludum Dare Sunday, after Saturday's game idea didn't quite pan out. It's a simple pixel art arcade game that pits you, a sheep, against a highschool gym task: The Beep Test.

It's a simple but oddly addictive game, featuring the greatest voice acting in video game history. The aim is to touch the opposite wall before the timer expires. Each touch of a wall scores a point and resets the timer. As your score increases, the random rearrangement of the environment becomes more and more challenging, inevitably ending with the sheep being turned into fluff by a spike, arrow or trench.

Fickle Fourcast was made for the first (and seemingly last) game jam at Yorkshire Game Festival. It took place alongside the festival and was judged by an industry panel on the Sunday, after entries were exhibited to the public in the National Media Museum.

Gameplay involves controlling a cloud with 4 different weather options. You must remember the type, location and order of the weather before flying over the British Isles to deliver it. I worked as a programmer/designer with a team of students from Sheffield Hallam and Bradford Universities. They did a great job on the art, UI and additional programming and their combined efforts won us a Nintendo Switch each!

Fickle Fourcast requires a PlayStation controller connected to your PC.

Troop 35 was an entry into Ludum Dare 35 and features plenty of lost scouts.

Players take control of the lead scout in a 3D twist on 'Snake' where the aim is to find all of the missing scouts before returning to camp. The game has a level manipulation mechanic that requires the player to visit maps and reorganise the environment's layout. It was interesting to experiment with this kind of world alteration and I also managed a closer look at Unity's animation system for the scouts' behaviours.

4mula Fun is another Ludum Dare entry and was my first step into 3D jamming. It was a little ambitious but I managed to develop a local multiplayer, low poly, split-screen racing game with 2 tracks and AI controlled opponents... in 2 days. I'm still not really sure how either.

The game wasn't quite as fun as its title would have you believe but it did teach me a lot about Unity. Helped by the small procedural animations and POV changes on the cameras, 4mula Fun feels like its own little world. You can even select a track and just watch as 4 bots go about their business.

Galactic Paperboy was supposed to be my farewell to Flash (although Bleep Sheep had something to say about that) and was made for Ludum Dare 30.

The aim of the game is to deliver newspapers to different planets by launching into a controlled orbit around them. I experimented a little with progression through the game. It's quick, with only 1 chance per level and an overall "career" score. I enjoyed the development and overall aesthetic of the game but the tinkering with traditional expectations from players led to some less than friendly comments!

Doug was a Sunday creation for Ludum Dare 29. A quick pixel art action game, Doug boils down to jumping over spikes.

With an obviously hilarious pun for a title, Doug quickly found a special place in my heart and is fondly remembered years later. The game ported seemlessly to tablets and enjoyed a time on Google Play before the app version was no longer supported.

Candy Rush Tower was made for the Candy Jam. Sweet.

It's an endless runner/climber where the player takes control of a gumdrop climbing through a cake style tower. Along the way, the player needs to gun down other gumdrops using even smaller gumdrops. It all makes perfect sense really. The game has a "one more go" flavour to it and was fun to make!

Chad was made for Ludum Dare 28 and features a little red block (or blocks, spoiler) as a protagonist. This wasn't intentional but I still think it sort of worked. Chad can be upgraded by an in-game shop, which was an interesting challenge and added some extra gameplay choices for the player.

It's a fairly straightforward platformer for the most part but Chad splits into up to 3 different bodies, controlled simultaneously, as the game progresses. The development was a good exercise in level design and difficulty curves.

Jetpack Nemesis probably takes the mantle of "Ant's first finished jam game". Made for Ludum Dare 27, it's an endless runner where the player has 10 seconds of jetpack fuel to navigate past obstacles and dodge the trailing nemesis.

Previous experiences had taught me to find a game engine, so Jetpack Nemesis was one of a bunch of games I made using FlashPunk. I didn't know it at the time but FlashPunk was great preparation for Unity, as they had a very similar approach to managing game objects

Cygnus was developed as part of One Game a Month and is made up of procedurally generated graphics. All of the background art, obstacles, level arrangement and foreground effects are created without placing a single pixel by hand. I've always enjoyed the creative side of programming and Cygnus was a great way to experiment with generative art in a game setting.

The game reached a wide audience, particularly in China, which contributed heavily to Cygnus acquiring over 1 million hits on Mochi Media before its close. It was also a great first step into AIR for Android development and the gameplay translated very well to touch controls.