
In Package Person, there are three types of notifications a player can receive. Upon losing, the player is brought to a leaderboard screen with the option to enter their contact information to be notified of any changes in their position on the leaderboard. The trick is for the player's top speed to be faster than the dogs' except when the Package Person is carrying a package. The game’s objective is to deliver as many packages as possible to the package drop locations in front of the houses while avoiding the dogs that chase the player. Predictably, they got pretty good at quickly throwing together simple games using Unity. He had been making games to pass the time with his roommates and during lockdown, they started hosting mini 4-hour hackathons that they called “game jams“ among themselves with some of their other friends as judges. Having had the time to develop these skills, Matt was inspired to build Package Person because of his experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. His initial knowledge of Unity came from that experience, and he used those skills to start making more conventional games in my spare time. Throughout his time with the AR/XR Club, he learned and taught other students how to use the Unity game engine to create augmented and virtual reality experiences, which often took the form of games. Matt's game development experience began when he joined the UMD AR Club during his freshman year, which later became the XR Club after merging with the VR Club. So finishing a project of reasonable quality by himself was the main challenge and primary goal. He had done hackathons several times in the past, but this was his first time doing it without a team. Since the 2021 Bitcamp Hackathon would be the last of UMD senior Matt’s career as an undergrad, he was committed to finishing a project and hopefully winning something in the process. Let's dive into how Matt got the idea for Package person, how he built it with Courier as a part of his suite of tools, and his reflections on the project. Matt Graber, a new grad, created a game called Package Person with a very interesting use of Courier. It was a 36-hour hackathon and it produced one of the most interesting projects we’ve seen out of a Hackathon. Back in April, Courier sponsored the Bitcamp Hackathon from University of Maryland.
