Game_jam - Category - Aurora Esmeralda

Tavern Tangent: Drink Swindler

auroraesmeralda@protonmail.com (Aurora Esmeralda) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +1000

This game was made in collaboration with Jessie Rachman. I was responsible for all programming besides NPC position tweening, and all UI implementation.

Protect and Swerve

auroraesmeralda@protonmail.com (Aurora Esmeralda) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Download Protect and Swerve on itch.io

This game was made in collaboration with Jessie Rachman, Matthew Baird, Ameen Alqudah, and Alexander Maturan. I was responsible for the scrolling background and many of the gameplay mechanics.

Someone had the audacity to break the speed limit in your jurisdiction.

Unfortunately crime doesn’t sleep, but neither do you. With the body cam off, it’s time to put some of your unofficial procedures to good use.

Stuff It We Snowball (Game Jam version)

auroraesmeralda@protonmail.com (Aurora Esmeralda) — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +1000

Source Code on GitHub

Stuff It, We Snowball was made in 28 hours for the 2025 Tech Fest / Riot Games Game Jam, in which it won the theme for “most intuitive game”. The theme for the jam was “enlarge”.

The Hacking Minigame

auroraesmeralda@protonmail.com (Aurora Esmeralda) — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +1000

Source Code on GitHub

The Hacking Minigame was made for the Playmakers March Game Jam, in which it came 5th. The theme for the jam was “Restart”.

Technologies Used

Godot

Python

Git

Lessons

Game Design Scope. In previous game jams, my approach has been “what’s the most ambitious thing I think I can make within the time limit”. In contrast key success of The Hacking Minigame is it’s conceptual simplicity. Technically, the game is made up entirely of UI nodes. I had a basic implementation working within an hour of the game jam beginning. I’ve heard the adage that a game jam game should have one idea, and one hook (in this case, Cyberpunk 2077’s hacking minigame, but with multiple varying objectives), but I had never particularly applied it. However, I think that is a good framework for game jams.
Idea vs Execution. The quality of the idea is questionable, as I will discuss in the next point. However, I was surprised by the degree to which execution enhanced a somewhat conceptually flawed experience. The game’s constrained scope allowed me a lot of time to polish and refine the experience, adding elements like shaders, sounds, and the intro sequence. Users valued the level of polish to a degree which I found unexpected; it’s hard when programming games to view them from the user’s perspective. In future, I should focus more on polish.
User Investment Must Be Earned. Unlike me, users found the game difficult to get into. The elements I found satisfying — meticulously planning sequences to achieve the goal — users didn’t enjoy, because it required them to invest valuable brain power, investment that I had yet to earn. This meant a lot of users bounced off, or worse, selected options at random until they died. The game wasn’t overly hard, but it was overly tedious, and despite trying to mitigate this with the game doing all the maths calculations, it was ultimately too much. In a game jam context, less taxing is better, because user investment in your game is low.

All em dashes in this post were ethically sourced. No LLMs were used in the creation of these, nor any other punctuation marks.

Scale Ray Saga

auroraesmeralda@protonmail.com (Aurora Esmeralda) — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +1000

Source Code on GitHub

Scale Ray Saga was made for the 2024 GMTK Game Jam, by myself and betapop.

Technologies Used

Godot

Python

Git

Railway Racers

auroraesmeralda@protonmail.com (Aurora Esmeralda) — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +1000

Download links are available on the Railway Racers itch.io page

Source Code on GitHub

Railway Racers is a real-time train logistics puzzle game. Source code is available on GitHub — containing some of the worst code I’ve ever written. But, if for some reason, you feel compelled to investigate the secrets behind elusive functions, such as find_path_but_dont_let_the_stupid_train_do_a_180_and_combust() or _throw_that_pokeball_babyyyy() — or simply wish to observe my insanity growing as manifested in code comments, then you may peruse it at your wish.

Quantum Salvage

auroraesmeralda@protonmail.com (Aurora Esmeralda) — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +1000

Source Code on GitHub

Quantum Salvage is top-down space shooter, with spacecraft switching mechanics. You enter a battlefield as the weakest class of ships, but improve your flagship and grow your army, becoming a formidable force on the battlefield.