String Theory was made in 72 hours during the Ludum Dare Gamejam (LD35).
String Theory
Side Project
April 2016 – June 2017
- Created all mechanics, systems and Unity tools from scratch.
- Spearheaded the creation of String Theory 2, reaching over 1,000,000 players in total.
- Took on team leadership tasks in addition to engineering tasks.
“This is just the prototype. We can make more.”
The side project that grew
String Theory started out as a 72-hour Ludum Dare gamejam project. It did quite well in the Ludum Dare ranking, being ranked #30 out of 1594 games, so we decided to upload it to a free webgame site called Kongregate. We didn’t really have any expectations, as we figured it would only be played by a handful of people. You can imagine our surprise when we found our game on the front page of Kongregate a week later, with over 100,000 plays!
That was when we decided to take String Theory more seriously. We created String Theory 2, and it was almost immediately frontpaged on Kongregate, Armor Games and Newgrounds. Today, the String Theory games have already been played over 1,000,000 times in total.
Getting organized
There’s only so much you can do in a timespan as short as 72 hours. Gamejam projects can be a great lesson in how to prioritize, but they also leave many cut corners and hacks.
When we decided to make a sequel, I knew it would require a major clean-up and a dedication to better practices. As the only programmer on the team, it was up to me to make sure our tech debt was paid.
Beyond code however, I also took on a stronger leadership and producer role, organizing the team’s tasks, timeline and goals. As a result, we built something that delivered on the potential that our simple gamejam game promised.