A.N.T. - Armageddon Neutralizer Tool

This was a game project that I started working on in high school. I started this project with 0 knowledge of game development and programming. Yet, I had enough ambition to try my best just to make a game.

I got a license for Game Maker and got started. Yes, this game was created with old game maker. In hindsight, there were much better programs to start with and learn, especially if I wanted to apply what I had learned to a job. At the time though, I just really wanted to make a game I could be proud of.

This game was solely developed by me for about 6 years...which is crazy to think about really, I stuck with it for a long time. I might have been super naive and ambitious, but despite it all I kept at it. Thanks to this project, I have learned a lot about what it means to work on a game and skills required to be a developer.

Over the time I spent on this project, I learned new coding languages and have gone to college. I understand what professional game development is like. I now know how to work with different IDEs, languages, and engines. Not only that, I have been able to talk with people who actually worked in the industry. I even know how to develop VR/AR software.

I soon realized that the ambitious game I started in high school was simply not a project that could last much longer. It had less to do with the motivation to complete and more about avoiding unnecessary workload, especially if that workload is dealing with an absolute mess of a project structurally. You think a high school kid knows how to keep a project organized both in assets and code?
So I dropped the project to keep myself open to new projects and ideas.

However, I didn't want to hide this game I worked on for a bunch of years from everyone I know. It may be a bit of a mess, but I put a lot of passion and love into it and people deserve to see it and play it if they want. Besides, there's actually a good amount of content in the game even if I didn't finish it. There is a very very small group of people who know about this game and an even smaller group of people who have the ability to play it. It feels wrong to me to put so much hard work into a game and just make it inaccessible. Games are meant to be played by people after all.

My life story aside, here's this game I made! For the most part, the game is stable. You won't always go from start to finish without a crash, but I believe that bug is somewhat rare and usually happens if you have the green powerup. Oh, also if you do actually make it to the end, the very last boss is an unfinished one unfortunately. It will likely break slightly if you bomb it....or it may just break in general.

I may cringe at the project file of this game...but I can't deny the love I put into it. Go and give it a try if you're curious.