About

About me (Zach):
I was born and raised in Kentucky and I’ve always loved video games. I grew up playing Pokemon, Minecraft, Skyrim, and all sorts of other games. I always leaned heavily toward strategy games and RPGs, but any game that would allow me to build my own levels really captivated my interest. I first learned about game development by making mini-games in Boom Blox (a Wii game that I loved), adventure maps in Minecraft, and eventually text-based games in Python once I started taking programming classes in high school. Eventually, I decided to try to learn Unity and made an entry-level FPS. After that, I started making more complex games in C# Visual Studio, Python, and eventually GameMaker Studio 2.
Once I got to college, I began work on my first full-sized game. Jeebo & Jerbo vs. Life is a 2D Metroidvania/JRPG with battles similar to old-school Final Fantasy or Mother. I released it on Steam near the end of college, and it was… not great. I hadn’t yet learned the importance of playtesting, so the game was confusing, clunky, and overall unpolished. After getting over that disappointment, I continued work on Jeebo & Jerbo vs. Life chapter 2. I updated quite a few things, had a few friends playtest it, and it improved substantially. A couple of years later, I released chapter 2 to yet another flop.
Again I was disappointed, but the more I watched new people play the game the more I realized that the game still had some pretty major issues. I spent the next few years working regular jobs and improving the game on the side until finally, it became a game that I’m truly proud of. It still doesn’t have much commercial success, but I think it’s a great game, so I’m still happy.
As I was winding down work on JJVL, I started working on writing a visual novel again. I had previously started writing an early draft at the beginning of college before I started chapter 1 of Jeebo, but it never went anywhere. I got one of my friends to help and since then we’ve been rewriting the script over and over again, refining it into a story far beyond the quality of the early drafts. We’re beginning to get close to the point where we’re happy with the script, and have begun the early stages of turning it into a full-fledged visual novel using Ren’Py. Now, I work as an AI trainer for Data Annotation, mostly working on coding assistants and math help chatbots, while I work on my gaming projects on the side.