Wanting a more relaxing game jam, I assembled a group of friends to make a collection of simple mini-games focusing more on a polished small game rather than an ambitious one. During the reveal of the theme, Roots, we met up with an artist named Ian who wanted to join us. We happily accepted, grateful to have an artist on the team! Ian did have one requirement though, we had to work in Unity. Until then, we had all assumed we'd be in Unreal Engine but all agreed the experience would be worth it. 

     Soon after we began pitching ideas back and forth, trying to find a few minigames we thought would work. Almost immediately, Violet came up with the fully formed concept of Rootin' Around. Everyone loved the idea of a raccoon, or trash panda if you wanna be spicy, rooting through the garbage. The team loved the raccoon so much that it became the main character of every minigame. As it turned out, nearly all Shawnee game jams included a panda of some kind that year. Great minds think alike!

     At the time, Violet had limited experience using game engines, so seeing this as a great opportunity to follow someone else's vision I decided to create the game. Violet would create the requirements, documentation, and samples of gameplay and my role would be to build the game based on the documentation.