Face Down | Rosy Raven Game Dev

Face Down is a game created by myself and four other developers for the second 2026 Barkeys Game Jam. The theme for the jam was "Trust No One," so we created a card game that requires you to lie to your opponent. The game can be found here.

The title page of Face Down, featuring a hanging sign with the title of the game, and two buttons that say "play" and "quit game" respectively

Because the dates for the jam were announced before the theme, we were able to put together a team consisting of a composer, a sound designer, an artist, and two programmers. We had a meeting a week before the start to set up what we could beforehand, creating a GitHub repository with an empty Unity project, a Google Drive to share files with the people not on the repository, and a Trello board to keep track of progress once we started.

a screenshot of gameplay, wherein you sit across from a pirate captain. There are cards along the bottom of the screen, a draw pile to the left, and a meter on the right that represents how much you have lied over the course of the game.

Once the jam started, we had another meeting to brainstorm, decide on scope, figure out what we needed, and assign tasks.

My first task was to create a deck of cards that would be used for the rest of the development process. I started by creating a Scriptable Object that contains a card rank, suit, and a reference to a sprite that is generated based on the rank and suit. Then I created a script that loops through the ranks and suits to generate an entire standard 52-card deck.

Throughout the course of development, I focused on creating small features that can be easily referenced and implemented in a number of ways and a variety of applications. I also did my best to create well-commented, easy to read code so that the other programmer on the team would be able to parse my work when needed. I prioritized communication with the team, telling them what I was working on and what I needed, asking for feedback on my work and giving it when asked.

The Unity Engine editor screen, featuring the primary gameplay screen in the center and a file explorer open to a folder full of card sprites

A screenshot of a Visual Studio screen featuring code that selects random cards from the hand and changes their rank

Perhaps the biggest hurdle I had to overcome during the development of Face Down was my tendency to forget about the engine in favor of programming. I would create and populate a list within a script, then other members of the team would have trouble editing them via the engine. My first instinct was to generate a prefab and set its transform in a method instead of dragging it into the scene in the editor.

Despite the issues we had, including losing an artist right before the start date, we still managed to create a complete, polished game over the course of a week. As of the time of writing this, the results of the jam are not yet released, but I am still very proud of our team and what we were able to accomplish.