Hello, I'm a computer science major and just finished my junior year at my university. My goal is to get involved in the game development industry. I was invited to this group some months ago, presumably after someone saw my Asteroids 9000 game on the Steam Workshop for GM:S.

So far, I have made Pong in Unity, Asteroids in GM:S, and a few interactive fiction stories in Inform 7. I tried applying for game development internships throughout the semester, but they turned out to be very competitive and that didn't really work out for me. I can talk plenty about games in many regards, but the experience I have to showcase so far appears to be a bit limited.

Right now, I am developing a 2D, top-down adventure game with a focus on character dialogue, exploration, and light puzzle solving. It is somewhat in the style of "RPG-maker" games like Ib or Angels of Death, which are games I've played and really enjoyed. My hope is that this project will allow me to learn and showcase many important, practical skills in a wide spectrum, such as tilesets, basic animations, saving/loading, character design, level design, music, etc. I hope to have it finished within the next three months, which I believe is possible considering the progress I have made in the time spent so far. Also, I do have the professional edition of GM:S thanks to that Humble sale a while ago.

Once this is done, I plan to distribute it evewhere I can find, stick it on my resume and online portfolio(s), and have a playable version I could take with me on a laptop to interviews. It seems like the most available positions are being offered in AAA studios, so I would look there first. Post-graduation internships are also a possibility. However, my long term goal is to work with a smaller group of people that is really passionate about telling stories with games (like Oxenfree or Night in the Woods, for example).

What do you think of this? Would an artistically simple (bare-bones), but well-written and thought-provoking free game be enough, in addition to a CS degree and what I've done already, to impress someone at a AAA company?

If you're interested, here is a sort of "demo" video I made of the progress I had a few months ago (been doing school in the mean time). Since then, I've added a main menu with saving and loading and a pause menu.
https://youtu.be/UCtFg5Bg_SE