One of the earliest projects I’ve completed was recreating the game Snake in Java. While not a technical masterpiece nor original, it nevertheless represents a special place in my portfolio. Working as a group of newly minted programmers, we managed to cobble together a game engine and assets over the course of a few days. It was an early example of having to deal with project management and research, as none of us had any experience past the basics in programming.
Past the sheer coding of it all, this project was an exercise in project management. My role was to design and develop the game states, that is, moving from menu to menu and menu to game etc., as well as handling difficulty modifiers and background changes. Of course, with all the overlapping parts of game design, this meant I had to discuss where the bounds of my area was so multiple people weren’t working on the same thing at once, separately.
Over the course of our cramming, we had to deal with some people not being able to complete their part, people wanting to have more work, and then trying to make everyone seem equally necessary at the end. Of course, I’ve had much more project management experience since this, but I think it’s important to be mindful of where you start.