Hi everyone,
This is my 6th LD jam. As a indie game maker, I take LD very seriously as a chance to explore creativity and skills.
So one day before the jam, I took some time and thought about every final theme and came up with some ideas.
And this is for “One Room” and several other themes. Player is trapped among giant boulders, and somehow he has the ability to move these boulder around. But due to the limited open space, it is still a difficult job to move around.
Klotski puzzle. in China, we call it Hua Rong Dao(华容道).
It is basically a twist of kind of puzzle called “Klotski”(sliding blocks around to move a marked block to certain place.). My idea is about twisting this mechanic into a exploration game: the world is full of sliding blocks, big and small in various shapes; player must move through with some careful thoughts.
The Jam Starts
But right after the jam starts, I started a brainstorm and had more ideas.
I was not very satisfied with the first idea. Reasons:
1.Not hitting the theme hard
Theme “One Room” is about physical space limitation. But this idea would end up a game world much larger than “One Room”.
One the other hand, it is not possible for the player to feel like in any room. As there is no way to add furniture.
2. How to balance the “puzzle” part?
This idea is definitely not about remaking the “Klotski” puzzle. I will not design the blocks so that player can pass with the right difficulty. Not to mention I want to add certain free play into the level design. So how do player deal with “impossible” situation?
I preferred idea No.2 “Use Room as resource” from the brain storm, yet I couldn’t came up with solid design.
Player has “One Room” and that’s all he got. He can take actions to counter the threat of death. But actions would be placing items on ground that cost “room (slots)”.
I still like this idea No.2 even after the jam. I can think of some great idea now. But I couldn’t come up with idea good enough under the pressure of jam.
Here was the idea I had after 4 hours after the jam starts (very funny, but no):
One day, the husband lost his job and he was very sad.
But he came up with a poster about a “Money Making Machine”.
He ordered one and he set it up in the living room.(Taking up a slot) The machine makes $1 every second. Player can also press the machine directly. The machine makes a “ka-ching” sound for every dollar it makes, even in night, which drived the wife crazy.
Yet then, husband just buy more machines with money he made. And he has to sell his furniture to make room for the machine.
In the meantime, I made some breakthrough for the idea No.1:
- Player can CUT a block out of a larger block to make the “impossible” situation possible to handle. And there is a “battery-cost” to have the player not abusing it.
- Player can hold the moving button and then release to make the block “RUSH” forward, crashing monsters along the way!!!
The second breakthrough bring the element of “BATTLE” into the game, and then I feel the idea complicated enough. As for the theme, I aimed to continue the development after the jam and hoped to publish somewhere , and the idea is good on its own.
Idea No.1 won the bidding.
Coding is Fun
How the three days spent
I happened to be in a time-zone of UTC+8:00. The jam starts at 10:00 am Saturday, end at 10:00 am Monday.(I aimed for compo when the jam start). I don’t have a job currently, good for the jam.
This is the decided concept art in AI
During the actual development, concept art was decided very quickly (I didn’t ask too much). I spent the first two days writing code. Here are certain jobs that cost me time:
- Move/rush a block: check how far it can go.
- Cutting: cut a piece out of a block, results in 2 or 3 blocks.
- Render the blocks: trace the border line of a block and create mesh to render.
- Analyse the tile-map data and create blocks for tiles neighboring same color. (must fast enough)
- Light up the blocks that can be see but no further.(This is totally just eye-candy)
Before each level, tilemap data must be parsed and split into each block. And you have to do it quick.
A single cut might just cause a block split into 3 blocks. That’s what makes it complex.
Desperation
These coding carried me away. During the late night of the second day, I felt sleepy and realized that maybe I can not stay up. Desperation arise. Here are the reason I should felt desperate:
- I have not touched UI.
- I had no actual level design.
- There wasn’t any level structure (title, thank for playing, level select, etc).
- I haven’t thought about the game title yet.
I have spent too much time on the coding of core mechanic itself. I should have spent the time more wisely, in the order of importance, and submitted early and then update.
In the end, I had to switch from compo to jam! I have another day to fight.
The Final Redemption
The third day, I worked on UI, logo, the first and only level, sounds and some bugs. I stayed up through the night. I had underestimated the “extra” work.
The last screen of game if the last job of development.
Back before the jam started, I had wished that I could have more time creating levels and have player enjoy for a longer time.
Post-Jam and Future
After the jam, I created another two levels, worked on a lot of other improvements. Currently I am working on a completed version of the game. Instead of a level-based game, I would like to experiment with random-map generation and rogue-like elements.
Thank you for reading.
