Jared Nolen
Programmer • Developer • Game Designer • QA Tester
Cursed Crops
Ten Person Team | 170 Series UCSC
Aug 2021 - Oct 2022
"Welcome to the field, farmer! Play with up to three of your friends as the best combat farmers this side of the Mississippi, defending haunted farms from the evil animated vegetables they grow in the fields. Cleanse this curse by planting crops, but be ready to reap what you sow!"
Cursed Crops is a local Co-Op action tower defense game where players must defend their farm from hoards of evil vegetables. In order to cleanse the farmland of its evil curse, players must plant a variety of special crops. These crops will come back as fearsome foes so prepare by constructing defenses and purchasing upgrades!
On Steam here!
On Itch.io here!
On GitHub here!
Game Website here!
Responsibilities:
This game was made for the UCSC CS: Game Design 170 Capstone series. A class where teams of students work together on one large scale project.
I was the lead programmer and my responsibilities included:
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Gameplay design
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Helping / overseeing other programmers
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Programming
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Player movement / actions
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Building / planting system
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Player input system
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Bug-fixing
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Art implementation
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Many other miscellaneous systems and tasks.
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Level design / creation
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Playtesting
In collaboration with:
Riley Dix: Producer
Ryan Marcus: Writer
Danielle Kraljevski: Art Lead
Joann Wong: Artist
Thea Gamez: Art
Juan Alvarado: Programmer
Keenan Rea: Programmer
Nathann Latimore (part-time): Programmer
Alex Gulsoy: Programmer, Artist
Max Monson: Musician, Sound Engineer
Tools / Languages Used:
Unity, C#, Visual Studio, GitHub
Design Process:
During the summer of 2021 I got together with a group of other UCSC students in order to form a team for the upcoming capstone series of classes. A group of students in both the Computer Science: Game Design, and Art Games and Playable Media majors. We didn't all know each other at first, but over the summer we met often and participated in jams together forming good friendships and teamworking skills. Before school started we had an in team pitch voting night to determine what project we would work on for the capstone. In the end, we decided to go with the idea I presented. A local co-op action tower defense game about farmers battling evil living vegetables. After various brainstorming meetings we got to work on the games core systems.
When the time came, we pitched what we had to the class and were able to continue with the project for the remainder of the year. We even acquired a few new team members, and spent the next several months building up the game. We had meetings twice a week and communicated often. Later in spring quarter, a few of us would run on campus playtests. Garnering useful feedback and testing what did and didn't work.
When it was time to submit our final project we were all quite happy with the work we had done. The game was received quite well at the end of the year showcase and it was fulfilling to see others enjoy the project we had worked so hard on.
After the school year ended, the majority of us stayed on the project and decided to add some final fixes and polish before self publishing it on steam.
This game was fantastic learning experience. I learned so much about working in a team on larger scale projects. What did and didn't work, resolving issues, and communicating effectively. I also learned a lot about game design, and system programming.