Home Depot Simulator

Download Link - https://pingwoh.itch.io/home-depot-simulator

I created this game at the Texas Hackathon 2019, which is a 24 (technically 25) hour long event where people create apps, websites, tools, or other fun things using code. A friend and I decided that it might be fun to create a "Diner Dash" style game but set within a Home Depot (one of the sponsors of the event). We wanted to attempt their challenge for the event, which was to showcase one of their core values. The one we went with was "Excellent Customer Service."

Originally the game was supposed to be on Android, but moved to a Mac/PC build instead due to time constraints and my inability to get the program to build to an Android at the time. I spent about 8 hours doing this, leaving me with about 16 hours to actually make the game proper. I was the only scripter on the project, and the only one working in Unity.

I had worked a little bit more in Unity and had a better control of the program, but was still very much a beginner in the engine, so a lot of the game is fairly clunky. Most of it relies on the UI and doesn't integrate perfectly. In fact, I would specify that this game is incomplete (the customer doesn't return, a few things don't have functionality) and that it's more a proof of concept/prototype than anything else. As well, I designed the UI on the project, leading some friends of mine through the process of actually creating the diagrams and documentation for the process.

While I had done a game jam previous to this (check out my blog post for fledgeling), I had never created a game in under 24 hours and never participated in a hackathon. Zack and I demoed this game at the end of the event, showcasing it to a panel of judges and the Home Depot representatives present as well. I worked through the night, all the way up to the noon deadline for submissions so that we could showcase our game in the best light possible. At my first game jam, I learned some valuable advice which is this - "If you learned something new, the experience was a success." I learned a lot during this experience, and tested my knowledge of Unity. Truthfully, I leave this up as an example of my growth as a scripter, and as an example of some of my UI work. I would love to completely recreate this game, so keep a look out.