1. I'm Durvin, a former librarian and current house-husband finally pursuing a lifelong interest in game design.
2. I've never been in a jam before and in fact this is my first time actually trying to make a game; my goal here is to really learn a program and get involved with the community, since I know very few games are made by one single person.
3. My gaming background is purely retro, especially the Sega Genesis era, although I think my all-time favorite might be "BurgerTime", of all things. My current fixation is on shmups, though, especially weird ones like Parodius, Cho Aniki, Boogie Nights, and Harmful Park; the Twinbee series' player design especially inspired my main project, which is like a shmup but instead of a gun you just get melee weapons, and my plan for the jam is to make a prototype that I can then expand into the something bigger. (I've been documenting my design process on Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/starstabberzirc if you're curious.)
4. No real experience yet! I've dipped my toes into GameMaker and GBStudio and am part-way through a Coursera class on Unity, but so far it's not coming easily and I'm hoping I can get some guidance or mentoring through the jam.
5. Outside of game design, I love linguistics and art history. The latter might come into play with my game, since I'm hoping to use a quirky collage style for the graphics.
6. My goals for the jam are to actually learn how to actually make a functioning game and to get involved with the community.