Score Game Jam (post-mortem)

This is a sort of a sequel to the previous post I made about Score Game Jam so please read it first if you haven’t yet.

So, I took part in my first Game Jam ever, as a participant at least. Obviously my game concept was way too big to be finished during mere 42 hours, and that is lesson number one I learned: you can never make a game concept too small if you’re in a game jam. Well, maybe you can, but that would be a positive problem.

Another useful note to self: make a schedule, even if you want to chill (or rather: especially if you want to chill). Making a game in such a short time requires some grand master project planning if you actually want to finish it. Or loads of experience on rapid prototyping. Also: define a clear goal for your game project. And no, “finishing the game” is not a clear goal. Plus, using some sort of a Scrum-ish development tool scaled down to jamming purposes might be a good idea.

As some might’ve already guessed, we didn’t finish the game. Not a big minus though, since most assets are now done both design, graphics and audio-wise. Some programming and lots of tweaking still left, but we decided to finish the game, hopefully during September. So, I would like to thank Juhani Hujala (programming), Vilma Pekola (graphics) and Jani Palovuori (audio) for daring to go along with my slightly megalomaniac visions, we’ll make it into a great game!

Since the game isn’t ready yet, here’s a piece of concept art for you to enjoy:

As a conclusion, I’d say that the Score Game Jam was an excellent opportunity for me to try out my skills as a game designer, and a soft landing to the world of game jamming. Big thanks to the organisers. Can’t wait for the next one!

Score Game Jam

On friday at 6pm (or so) started my second game jam ever, and the first one that I’m participating as a jammer, not as an organizer. Since there’s still plenty of time – about 1.5 hours – until the game should be ready, I figured I’d waste precious crunch time on blogging.

The jam started the way the apparently always do: with a short motivational speech including the legendary video with the legendary Tyra Banks + white eyeliner -clip. Plus the theme was revealed: Everything is different.

Then it was time for some introductions, pitching and teaming. Although I have quite a bit of experience as a producer, I finally wanted to give game design a proper try. I also happened to have a game idea that went with the theme so I went around pitching my idea, mapping who seemed to be on the same page with me. I ended up teaming with a graph designer and a coder who I knew beforehand but never worked with before. However, I had loved their Global Game Jam game (With Strings Attached) so I had quite a good idea of their skills.

My game idea got it’s original inspiration from an article about a rat temple located in Deshnok, India, called Karni Mata. It got me thinking about the Hindu religion and the concepts of karma and reincarnation and how that would make a very interesting game. Starting from this basic idea, we ended up deciding that the game would be a platformer where the goal is to reach the top and enlightenment. The player would start of as an ant, and although they could play the whole thing trough with that avatar, they could also collect tokens that would allow them to reincarnate from the bottom of the temple as something bigger, better and faster.

We decided to have five different animals in the game. The first one is ant, the next one rat, then a Jungle Cat, then a Macaque, and the last one a character from Hindu and Buddhist mythology called Garuda – a mix between a human and a bird. The different parts of the temple get more challenging the further you get, but reincarnating makes it easier to advance. However, reincarnating also means you return to the bottom of the temple. There is a western tourist trying to get rid of you, and although we had originally planned you could also attack the tourist – which would obviously affect your karma negatively, meaning you would reincarnate as a slower animal the next time you died – we had to give up on the idea due to lack of time.

Another limiting factor is the dev tool we’re using – Unity. It doesn’t seem to be the most ideal one for platformers. Getting the level layout work the way it would be desirable was a real puzzle game that I spent most of yesterday evening and night solving. At the moment we’re struggling with getting the ant move the way an ant would, not to mention tweaking all the other creatures. Although, the ant seems to be the kid causing the most trouble. Audio is also still on the way plus the graphics need a few more elements.

Fingers crossed that the next post will contain a link to a working game!