Game Design

Donnacha Lohan Davy

I’m Donnacha, I’ve been tinkering and developing games for the last decade or more starting back long ago with Scratch and later learning how to develop in Unity with C#. I’ve a great love of games, be that digital or physical, a love for mechanics and designs across the board, always studying and thinking how different mechanics work programmatically. I’ve a fascination for learning and putting my puzzle solving skills to work, which is why programming calls out to me.

I took these aspects of myself into my studies; across projects I’ve made a lot of strives towards improving my code, the methods of designing and creating clean code systems. Across my years I’ve worked on various ends of code, taking different approaches to each puzzle, I’ve designed for myself. I’ve taken the approach of changing what aspects of the game I have coded, this has been my larger goal to diversify my skills rather than limit myself and my opportunities. With this I’ve increased my ability as a programmer with good skills, learning skills that better enhanced my productivity, taking time to design systems ahead of creating them. 

/ LinkedIn

Limiters Not Found

As part of a team of 4, we created a game within a week as part of the 2023 Games Now Missing Game Jam. This game took a lot of work, but the 4 of us were ready to do what we needed to get it done in the time limit. We split the work evenly, taking the first day to plan at what our ideas and then what goals we had to complete to get there. At the end of day one, we had decided on a Noir Cyberpunk Themed side scroller with gameplay that emphasised counter attacking and good positioning. My role was creating the enemies and their AI, getting them to move into position before firing at the player, the major difficulty of balancing so that the AI is tough but not unbeatable in a group. 
This game later went on to be showcased as part of the few selected as part of the Games Now showcase, a major honour for our team, with myself and another representing our team. We were very grateful for this opportunity to meet developers in Finland for both our team and the college.