Welp uh... hi there! I'm Nine, or Ren, both names are acceptable. ^^; Guess I should introduce myself. I've never participated in any game jam before because...
I'm pretty much entirely new to coding! I've been dinking about with Gamemaker Studio pro since I got it on a humble bundle for ridiculously cheap, and have been having a pretty great time muddling through things with GML and learning to code (I set myself the task to never use the drag and drop interface, or use it as little as physically possible, since it's not as much fun as puzzling out code for some reason! Yeah I don't understand it either ^^; ), and then a friend indicated this jam to me, and I figured I should give it a shot, for multiple reasons.
First: It will help me learn to code.
Second: It'll teach me good time management and goal orientated behaviours
Third: I'll be more motivated to keep on task and not let myself get distracted. ^^;
Fourth: coding games seems like it could be a lot of fun!
I've always liked shmups even though I'm usually terrible at them, and I really enjoy most games to be honest. I crave good storytelling in videogames, and I'm of the opinion that whilst good graphics are a great thing, I'm happy for stunning beautiful backgrounds and eyecandy to take a back seat to an actually playable game and great engaging characters and worldbuilding, though there is always a place for more simplistic, less cerebral and more pure fun oriented games as well, such as abstract puzzlers or weird esoteric stuff :)
I think the only prior experience with gamedev I have other than super recently, is way back when I messed around with BASIC on my Spectrum 128K+2a years back when I was a little kid (for all of a sum total of a day or two maybe), or the brief stint I tried Klik & Play and The Games Factory out (again, many years back as a teen). Neither of those attempts ever got anywhere nor did I make anything that was functional, fun or well designed, and I grew bored of it very quickly. This latest attempt I seem to be having way more fun with, mostly because I'm actually coding? GML's surprisingly fun to use!
as for things I'm passionate about, um... Cats, being a good person, human rights, and really nice cups of tea. Oh and cute things. ^^;
so yeah that's a very brief rundown on me I suppose. um.. hi!