Niji Jump 🌈
My first experience publishing and advertising an iOS app.
I started this challenge feeling aprehensive and excited at the same time. Excited because it was my first opportunity working with someone I personally like and admire a lot, and aprehensive because it was about developing a game… and what can I say. I am not really much into gaming. Also, even though I had been coding pretty much since the beginning of my journey in the Academy, this was my first time flying "solo", since my partner was not very interested in coding — we are both designers, and I believe it's fair enough.
Luckily, though, I remembered I really enjoyed playing a flash game on my computer over 10 years ago. I found out it didn't exist anymore, but plost twist #1: there was an app on the App Store for it. So, I showed it to my partner and she was on board: we had our first reference.
When it came to design style, we both really liked the visuals of GRIS, an amazing indie game which I played a few years back. We embraced this reference by making all our visual elements in watercolor style.
So, even though I wasn't really excited about the gaming thing it started growing on me. I was also really thrilled about the first workshop we had on it, since it was probably the first workshop my ADHD allowed me to follow real-time. It was a flappy bird tutorial and I remember being obsessed with this game with it first game out. It felt magical that in only one afternoon I had in front of me the code of that game I played so hard a few years ago, back when I was studying Computer Science, and honestly, not feeling like programming at all.
Since I had close to zero experience with SpriteKit at first I needed a lot of help from mentors. I felt happy though that I was able to use a lot from the workshop. I challenged myself to get as little help from my partner (the one I share my life with who happens to be a senior developer) as possible this time, since I feel like I was getting too used to getting things too easily.
At the same time I feel like having someone that good at coding around me, and that the Academy is an amazing opportunity to learn things without the need to spend hours and hours looking stuff up on Google, I feel like I should know how to deal with situations without direct help. I've been considering becoming a developer since I got into coding last year, and I know I won't always have mentors having my back if I decide to do this for a living.
In the begining I'll admit, it was very hard and I still needed a lot of help. However, in the final parts of the challenge I saw myself being able to implement things and to fix bugs on my own, which made me really proud of myself.
The main challenge of this challenge was not coding, though. As I said, I was working with someone very dear to me, and it was quite disappointing for both of us.
DISCLAIMER: I feel like I can openly talk about this now since we've already sorted things out.
This was quite a tough time for both of us. My partner was struggling with her job and managing university matters, and I was so burned out from my job that I actually got a 15-day license from my psychiatrist. He thought it was okay to continue doing my academy work, so I wouldn't feel useless and bored all day long, but it wasn't the same as always. I was always very open with my partner about this, she was always very understanding, but since we were both facing hard times there were days we pretty much didn't communicate. We went from being super close friends who hung out every week and had sleepovers to having nearly no contact while we were working on the project. Even though I accepted the challenge of coding it all by myself, I also felt like I was working considerably more than her. This all started building up and I had no idea how to talk to her about it.
Gladly, though, we had a conversation about it and we were on the same page. She agreed she also wanted to do more for the project, so the took the lead when it came to business, which for me was a massive relief considering I really struggle with this part. Sometimes I could tell she was overwhelmed with everything going on in her life + having to do it all on her own, and it disappointed/upset me that I was of no help whatsoever — both because I felt weak/not had the energy to do stuff, and also because she did not want my help.
I feel like some of our business could have been better had I helped with stuff, especially considering we basically didn't work on our social media, but we still had quite good results on our campaign, so it's alright.
On the day before the last of the challenge she came over to my house and we had a heart to heart about it all, and about everything else that was bothering us and going on in our lives. It was a very special moment, and I couldn't be more glad we had it. Feels great to be able to open up about struggles, and we gladly finished this challenge feeling like we were not only on the same page on everything, but also proud of our results.
So, without furtherdo, here is Niji Jump:
Thanks mainly to my partner, to our mentors, and to every friend/colleague who helped us with feedback and by playing our game. ❤️
