A Game Jam Palate Cleanser
Welcome back to my first real post in a while, and it’s not even about the main game I’m working on. Over the last weekend I participated in the GMTK game jam for the second time as a solo dev. Last year I had almost no experience in the tools I was using, this year I felt a lot more comfortable. The theme was COUNTDOWN and as soon as it started I was going through ideas.
The two main thoughts that stuck in my head were 1: a sort of Overcooked style game, where you were hectically running between stations to keep things going as timers counted down and 2: some sort of Katamari like game where instead of collecting things you were destroying everything, trying to get rid of all your possessions (bringing your net worth down to 0). I went with option 2 since I saw an opportunity to work with something I hadn’t before, Unreal’s Chaos destruction.
What Went Well
It was a lot of fun learning a new system and making something that felt decently fun to play. Though I’m sure there is a lot more to it, I got some basic breakable items, with different strengths and break sounds, as well as a fun vacuum/shoot mechanic.
I didn’t have to google nearly as much as last year to get things working. I got some actual options set up, did animations with notifies set up, level selection with data carrying over between levels. All things I had no idea how to do a year ago.
This also reinvigorated me a bit. I’ve been slowly working on things for my main game, but this reminded me that I can try things out quickly instead of trying to make everything “perfect” from the beginning. It also got me back into Blender for a bit, which I haven’t even touched this year.
What Needed Work
Though I got the basic mechanic up quickly, I spent a lot of time trying to get it to feel right, and hoping that by the time it was good, I would have a plan for the actual levels and gameplay loop. When I was finally happy with breaking stuff, I didn’t really have enough time to set up everything else. I ended up using a lot of premade assets that I was hoping to avoid, just to get something to show. I also worked on mechanics I never ended up using, like a leveling system that let you destroy stronger items (somewhat used with a few items you could charge up to break).
As the development went on, everything got increasingly hard coded and interconnected. I basically just put functionality in whatever blueprint was open at the time, there was no real organization, and at some point I stopped naming things in any comprehensible way. It didn’t matter too much for the jam, but if it went on for even a couple more days, adding anything might have become impossible.
What I’d do next time
Both this year and last year I went into the game jam solo, mostly just to get some more experience, but I think next year I would be happy joining up with some people. Though I like doing everything, it would be really nice to focus on one aspect and not feel like working on mechanics means the art or level design suffers.
Though I’d like to stick with Unreal, I know Godot or something else that can post to the web is a lot more popular for jams, so I may take a crash course there. It would also be nice to know if whatever skills I’ve been learning translate across engines.
Also for one reason or another, both years I had to take at least one full day off. I would love to actually be able to stick to it for the full time.
In the mean time, I’ve been chipping away at some main game work, and should have a real devlog up in the next month.
