By far the most feature complete game jam submission I have been involved in, Potionseller is another example of my work as the sole programmer on a project.

Potionseller was made in a week for the Games Jobs Live 2021 Spring Game Parade and involves using randomly generated ingredients to brew and sell potions for a profit.

A technically simple game, I took the opportunity to learn how to implement some systems I had either never implemented before or, at the very least, did not have a lot of experience with. Most of the code for this project runs back-end systems such as ingredient generation and file parsing. Using JSON files the game allows designers to add and adjust new ingredient types or modifiers without needing any coding knowledge. I created a simple syntax that is easily readable and scripts to parse and arrange the data into appropriate structures during runtime using the Unity SimpleJSON plugin. The ingredient generation system reads a file of "parts" which it then uses to assemble a random assortment of ingredients to populate the in-game shops with. I implemented an ID system for the parts that allows the system to generate a specific ingredient (useful for tracking the player's inventory between game sessions) and also a tag system that lets us keep shops separated into categories such as 'meat' or 'plant'.
Another first was the implementation of a save file system. Since much of the game's data already interacted with JSON files, it made the most sense to use the same style of system to handle saving player data between game sessions. There is a cheating risk involved with using unobfuscated JSON files for player save data, but we decided that for a game jam submission such an increase in security was not a priority.

Overall I am very pleased with how this game turned out and my team and I plan to continue its development by adding more mechanics to make the process of brewing the potions more involved.