Halo Heroes: A Microsoft hackathon project

one week. non stop.

Every year Microsoft hosts the annual employee hackathon. In 2017, I participated in my first one where I created my first game and made a few lifelong friends. While most hackathon projects aren’t publicly disclosed, ours became public when it was featured as part of the 343 Industries’ employee spotlight for our group lead and one of my best friends.

a halo game for everyone

The concept was simple: let’s make a couch co-op PVP brawler based in the Halo universe. The idea was around making Halo accessible for everyone—all ages, all skill levels, gamer or no gamer. I joined as an artist and our group decided on going with a “chibi” hand drawn style of art for the game. I drew and painted all custom assets, as well as mapping out the UX flow for the core game loop. The majority of my hackathon days were spent morning until night drawing, painting, and scanning in assets to be imported into the game. However, due to the tight time constraints, there was no time for iteration and some UI never got drawn.

an experience not to forget

The Halo Heroes project was a transformative experience for me. I can’t quite describe the feeling of watching so many people gather around the screen to laugh and play a game that I had a hand in creating. While I’ve been a lifelong gamer, this was the first time seeing my work come to life, and the joy in seeing people come together over games is something I’ll never forget.