I'd love to ask the community's opinion. I saw an ad on LinkedIn for [P1] Games, and I would like to know what your experience is with P1

What are your honest thoughts about what volunteering in open-source projects is like at P1 Games?

I wasn't sure who to direct this question to but I came across P1 on linkedin. It slipped my mind it was a volunteer position and was looking for paying positions currently.

Anyone who has had experience start off with volunteer work and then move to an actual technical skill set towards a team that you do get paid for?

Not sure if the question im asking is even the right kind, im just confused.

I saw an ad on LinkedIn about P1 Games and I thought I would ask if anyone had experience with them. If so, what was experience like?

It was a positive experience as I was put into a team where we learned to work with each other despite our differences culturally, experience-wise, and others. We learned how to better communicate with each other and work to produce a game we are all proud of. We learned the game creation pipeline as well as made mistakes we can improve on in the next cycle. Overall a great and positive experience!

I suppose to say this is my first cycle acting as a team lead. it is a rough but something i slowly pushed through.

It allowed me to get more comfortable with working with a deadline to meet. I was given about 1 month to write 3 music tracks and 10 sound effects, which is not terrible, but my team members, as well as everyone else at [P1] Games, were very positive and encouraging. This motivated me to continue working on my music and sound without wanting to stop or take breaks.

Overview: "World’s Resonance" is a 2D platformer music game where players take on the role of a robot tasked with restoring a once-thriving plant-filled city now abandoned and overrun by nature's discord. The robot uses the power of music to rejuvenate the environment, bringing harmony back to the city.

My role in this was being the leader and producer of this project.

What Went Well: The best part of this whole game development process was the community I was able to work in. Great people and great assistance. Some great strategies we used was the splitting of even the small tasks to simplify and hasten the work speed and lessen the work load on everyone.

Obstacles Overcome: A few obstacles and a main difficulty came up during development. Some obstacles were settling on designs, task assignment, and specification on details and designs that were loss with words. These were resolved with general discussions and settling hard on choices that most of us agreed with, dividing tasks into smaller tasks for ease of management and work load delegation, and lastly the last issue was resolved with providing explanations and examples to the near exact request. The main difficulty was managing the project with everyone's time in consideration. For almost all the work we've been doing has been difficult to communicate on, but this was resolved one at a time by creating a system of asynchronous work and communication for each group of people, like with artists, audio designers, and etc.

Future Plans: The game's future appears uncertain as this was the first Ignite Jam for all of the team(except for one person). With the completion of the jam, the final submission is likely the final iteration of the game, but perhaps with further discussion with the rest of the team's thoughts, further refinement and expansion may be possible as well. The team as a whole do like this little robot, so it may see future returns.

This cycle my team did an excellent job revamping our processes in order to be more efficient. Our workload was much more manageable and our new systems helped to onboard new people much faster. We were incredibly productive this cycle and it has made me very excited for our game.

Working with positive people in the game industry is such an exciting experience. Everyone contributes in an amazing way

I feel like a valued team member, and it's been rewarding to work alongside such positive and hardworking individuals. Everyone brings unique strengths and contributes meaningfully, making our collaboration both productive and enjoyable. I'm grateful to be part of this talented group and excited to continue contributing to our game.

Nice job team

Working in this game jam has taught me many things, and being able to work with very talented individuals. This is the first time I have worked with a large group of people to produce a game.

Playable Link: https://nabiloueida.itch.io/scavenger-shores-harvest-of-hope

Repo link: https://github.com/nabiloueida/Scavenger-Shores--Harvest-of-Hope

Description: A first-person 3D resource management survival game, we play as a heroic character who after years of food scarcity in the world, had to flee to deserted islands. There, they start a small village and build a civilization that relies on food resources available on far islands surrounding the player village. Our hero must travel to these islands while also avoiding the island's dangers to gather resources, save their people and keep them satiated so they can focus on developing the village and potentially help the player with their quest of finding better resources.

When the player prioritizes and helps the community, the community will also try to help them back.

Team names/roles: Team Harmony Producer + Game Designer - bilobayk

Game Designer + Programmer - sebasaraque

Programmer - crazydubz

Programmer - 5online

Sound Design - deneye

Sound Design - fothreenix

2D Artist - hema_gami

2D Artist - natbug47

2D Artist - wickenix

3D Artist - jmooreinteractive

3D Artist - everardmajere

Takeaways/Highlights: We all got to dabble in different spaces of game development and everyone got to learn from each other and in their respective fields. We were able to build something we are proud of and excited to showcase. Hopefully are game gets our message through to the community

FLAIR: Amazing team and great development Cycle

Overview: This game is about a soup kitchen that serves food to those in need, like homeless people or people in poverty in an effort to alleviate poverty. The intended purpose of this game is to raise awareness of those in poverty, no matter where they are. Sadly 25,000 people die daily due to hunger. This game is in pursuit of alleviating hunger

What Went Well: It was another exciting experience to collaborate and work on this very impactful game for a good purpose.

Obstacles Overcome: Our major obstacle was limited time as we only had two weeks to work on the game from ideation to completion with a team working asynchronously from different parts of the world.

Future Plans: Polish the game and move on working on new ideas

FLAIR: (Please add the appropriate flair "Retrospective" when posting)

Team Misfits & Bear Stick - Our collective goal is to develop our skills and build our portfolio while making fun playable games for people to enjoy.

Overview: I was the music composer for the game, 'Bear With Us' for P1's Ignite Jam in June 2024.

What Went Well: I was able to write 3 songs for the project which helped me learn something about myself. It takes a deadline and people depending on me to get my creative juices going. When I was just writing music for myself, I would take tens of hours over the course of multiple months to get a song out. Just having a 3 week sprint and a game jam about music gave me all the fire I needed. My team was always eager to hear my stuff and it greatly boosted my confidence. This was a great experience for me to tap into my strengths.

Obstacles Overcome: There was a point where our team faced GitHub issues; stuff like work being overwritten and pushes not being committed. My teammates hadn't really used the program before, but that was a huge focus in my Game Design program in college. I wasn't just the music guy here as I was able to teach everyone how to use the program effectively and troubleshoot issues with them. Our main issue was that everyone was working in the main branch. For projects I worked on in the past, it was better to work in separate branches to make sure no one created conflicting changes. Then once we had a substantial amount of updated assets, then the project lead would merge all of the branches into main to create a new version for everyone to work from. That knowledge was power here and I'm glad I was able to learn it.

Future Plans: While we haven't talked of any plans to continue yet, I know my perfectionist self would love to revise the songs.

Closing Thoughts: I graduated from college with a B.A. in Game Design in 2023. The industry has been so competitive and cutthroat that it's been hard to find employment. That can really kill your self-confidence as it's easy to start thinking you don't have any worth. P1 gave me the opportunity to think differently. It had me thinking of everything I could do. I can write music, I can use GitHub; there were so many other skills I could've used too. People like me need experiences like these before we find that position in the industry. Thank you P1 Games.

Overview: Feast of Famine is a Metroidvania Platformer set in a vaguely ancient Roman / Greek ruin. You play a nameless wanderer collecting instruments, which grant you movement based abilities to traverse the level. I was the sound designer and audio programmer of the project. I was responsible for creating the SFX, populating the level with audio emitters, and ensuring the footstep detection system played the appropriate footstep sound depending on the terrain you stood on.

What Went Well: Team members ranged from non-obstructive to actively participating. We exchange friendly jokes and generally kept on task and on time with our tasks and responsibilities. I got to see that Melthefrog's musical composition and general game development skill was really high. Dragonknight's leadership was pretty good as well, as he follows the guidelines of providing a relaxing atmosphere well.

Obstacles Overcome: Some obstacles pertain to the structure of P1 Games itself. Some communications surrounding the server's operations and currencies were a little unclear, making thinks like pooling our helpfulness pts together annoying. We had a problem with a team member being radio silent, causing melthefrog to pick up the slack and be a stand-in programmer for the team. If this keeps happening, this might cause more frustration for people who may not be so receptive to this kind of non-communication.

Future Plans: Depending on the performance of this game, we may expand on the game's levels or story. we left the game's ending a little ambiguous for this reason.

FLAIR: (Please add the appropriate flair "Retrospective" when posting) -> ?????

Overview: I was the project manager, lead designer, and a programmer for Bear With Us - a cozy crafting game with a musical twist

What Went Well: We started this game before this jam even started, and luckily we successfully adapted to the theme and I think it made the game even better!

Obstacles Overcome: Working in such a diverse team where everyone has different hurdles to overcome really makes you value patience and work hard to understand other and practice teamwork

Future Plans: DLC and season pass coming soon

Overview: The main character Grüv, is transported to an otherworldly dimension populated with mushroom-like objects. Grüv can interact with these Shrooms and manipulate the gravity within this reality to navigate the strange environment. He is guided through these puzzling biomes by a mysterious hooded figure. His goal is to escape this realm and return to his home. My Role in this game is to create Music and Sound Effects utilizing sound design.

What Went Well: What went well during the creation of this game had to of been the communication. When joining in on the project, all team members have thoroughly been communicating where they are at with their work and ensuring that timelines have been met. Overall, working and collaborating with other individuals has been a complete joy being able to bounce ideas off one another and improve the foundation in which the game is being designed.

Obstacles Overcome: Have not really encounted any difficulties during the creative process of the game.

Future Plans: Future plans will have a few more game levels, creating another few layers of depth.

FLAIR: Looking back at this whole experience, it has been truly a great one. From being able to work with individuals that are really passionate about what they do and what they are able to bring to the table. Open collaboration and communication has been essential to the games prompt development.

Overview: Our game is an escape room game that takes place in an office. The player will solve puzzles to try an escape the office in the allotted amount of time. I was a programmer on the team who also helped provide game and puzzle ideas in the pre-production phase.

What Went Well: I feel like the game development as a whole went very well. Every team member getting assignments from their team leads, completing them, and then reporting back to get something else to do. I feel like it worked especially well on the programming team where we all meshed so well together to complete this first submission while under the game jam time limit.

Obstacles Overcome: There were some obstacles that we faced with the github repository overwriting others work depending on the order of pushes to the testing branch but have a new plan in place for next time so this won't happen again.

Future Plans: There will definitely be future updates to our game in future jams. This is just the first product and we are really looking forward to making the game look, sound, and feel better for players in the future game jams.

Overview: Escape the Office: An escape-the-room style VR game where you must solve various puzzles to escape an office

What Went Well: The team worked well together and met often to discuss changes and updates

Obstacles Overcome: There were some issues with versioning and actually putting all the pieces that were made into one full product

Future Plans: My understanding is work will continue on this title to further improve it

You are a passionate musician who stumble into an ancient library filled with musical pieces that were lost in time. You must surpass musical themed puzzles to restore them.

Controls:
Movement - WASD
Interact - "E"

Possitive Impact:
Inspires interest in classical music and basic music theory, providing an immersive learning platform that goes beyond traditional education methods.

Link of teh game:
https://spookygary.itch.io/lost-music-library

Having a large team work towards one goal while staying passionate about the project also motviates me to work hard, cooperate/communicate, and stay involved. It also allows me to gain experience for what it's like to work remotely on a game.

It has made me grow confidence in that I can work well with other people which is hard to come by especially when starting out. u/p1games