This was different kind of jam for me. For starters I didn’t work alone. Which made the jam that more awesome.
My partner was Rastko (rastko96), 18 year old high-school student from small rural township. We met at local game dev meeting I organized. He complained that he can’t get together a consistent team, that most of his projects ends up half-done as his friends lose interest due to protracted timelines connected to game development. So I was very happy to be in position to help him finish this one and though the game needs more work, we did it! We managed to complete the game.
“You deal with gameplay, and I’ll do the rest!” shouted my young Jedi-developer and jumped into the fray.
What went good
We didn’t spend too much time on brainstorming. Rastko and I were already discussing a similar project and this jam’s topic fit our idea like a glove. So basically, we decided to create a prototype for our next ‘real’ game using this jam as training grounds. Also, while we talked about many possible game projects, this was our first opportunity to actually collaborate.
Working with someone skilled is also a big boon for the project. We didn’t lose time trying to find solutions. Yea the game is hacked, but it was done few hrs before deadline…
I loved the cartoony shader Rastko implemented, as well as his models, and he loved my crazy voice-acting for Alien… I think it’s important that you care about skills and work of your partner. It makes jamming more pleasant with thrill of doing things right amplified by your team’s glorious effort…
Otherwise, things went rather smooth, we more or less implemented what we desired. Game is quirky so requires from player to be alert, perceptive and clever. There is game within a game, sort of meta-message, so we added WTF section to help fellow jammers and judges to get into the groove of our piece. I believe that games can be powerful tool in learning about the world, powerful way to send a message. Yea, sometimes my game design suffers from such ambitious plan, but this time I think I pushed the envelope closer than in any previous jam…
What went wrong
Aside of quite obvious, the polish and some sort of tutorial, our game didn’t suffer from any serious setbacks. Yes, there were things we meant to implement like more complex eco-system with visible creatures living an dying in the World of Floating Islands, also we wanted to implement AI aliens that would be greedy so player would need to defend his ‘roid fields from attackers, but you can’t have it all…
Not much else went wrong… just little bits that add up… like spending too much time animating and modeling alien and his ship… being too lazy to change bits and pieces that would make the whole look better… losing internet connection 1 hr before deadline… you know the usual crap…
Bonus Like
I always adore that moment when you spot a game very similar to your own, yet very different in the same time, so shout-out to JetL33t for their piece!!!
Stay cool
R&R (Rastko & Ranko)
