In early 2021, I was living in Seattle while my family was back in Ireland. Covid had made the world very small, and we were running out of ways to spend time together across nine time zones. So when Zeno Game Jam 3 came around with the theme “It Never Ends,” we figured–why not make a game?
Tomb of the Snake King is a rogue-like snake-like (a genre I’m fairly confident we invented). You venture into a tomb to grab cursed treasure that trails behind you like a growing serpent tail. Dodge mummies, avoid scarabs, don’t touch the walls. The “It Never Ends” theme fit perfectly–the longer you survive, the harder it gets, because you’re literally getting longer.
Ellie, who was twelve at the time, did all the art and music. The pixel art has a charm to it that I genuinely couldn’t have produced–sometimes having a twelve-year-old’s sensibility is exactly what a game about raiding cartoon tombs needs.
We built it in Unity, targeting browser so anyone could play it. WASD to move, and the whole thing runs in a few minutes. It’s the kind of game where you die, say “one more go,” and then it’s 2am.
We came 5th overall out of the jam entries. For a first attempt–a family scattered across the Atlantic, cobbling a game together over video calls–that was a massive boost. It went from “that was a fun experiment” to “so when’s the next jam?”