General overview

I joined the Mini Jame Gam #22, it ran from the 29th of September to the 1st of October. Giving us about 60 hours to create a game. The theme was THEFT and for this jam there is a special object that you have to incorporate into the game, and this time it was A TOY. I was pretty happy with the theme and special object. I decided to use Gdevelop for the first time in this project. It was also my first "solo" game jam since 2021!

The game follows the story of a cat girl whose action figure was stolen by a mysterious man that escaped into the sewers. Now she has to find it. It's a platformer with a focus on fun mechanics and smooth gameplay. 

The jam went pretty smoothly and i fell in love with Gdevelop as it allowed me to focus on game feel rather than programming interaction between objects.I realized towards the end of the jam that i didn't have enough time to do the sound so i messaged @totsnuk who helped me with the sounds.
We ended up #14 overall form about 70 entries, but to my surprise we won the Gameplay category!

So i'm really happy with the way it all turned out.

What went right ?

This time i nailed the time management and scope of the game compared to my previous attempts. I wanted to stick to a balanced work/life schedule for this jam, that left me with about 8 hours of work per day. The big thing that i changed form my previous game jams was that i stopped myself form overthinking by setting a fixed time where if i didn't have any better ideas i would just start making the first one. This lead me to actually make a game that can be played and not just creating the perfect idea on paper. My restrictive schedule also allowed me to do more focused work and relax when not working.

I focused pretty hard on gameplay and feel, and it payed off. Its really easy to design new mechanics and prototype them in Gdevelop. When designing the levels i used the contrast of Safe/Dangerous areas. When i introduced a new mechanic i made sure it was in a safe and easy environment, then i tested the understanding of that mechanic in a dangerous and harder area. This helped to ease players in and made the experience new and interesting every room.

When making the game feel good i used mainly squash & stretch. It is applied through code so i can make less animations. The character has only a one frame idle, 5 frame run and a death animation. For making the player movement feel good i used the interactive video essay form GMTK to understand good movement. If you are making a platformer i also really recommend to watch his video about Celeste. 

Scene transitions are really important to make your game feel polished! I created an animation with blender and turned it into a .gif using ezgif. Then you just have to play the animation when switching to a new scene and loading a scene. It goes a long way to making the game cohesive.

What went wrong ?

Not much went wrong, apart form me not having enough time to make more levels and do the character and level art. I just want to say that it takes more time to make the art for a mechanic than the mechanic itself . I would spend less time on mechanics and more on art.

The implementation of the theme and special object was very weak. I wanted to tie it into the gameplay but ran out of programming time before i could to that. I need to work on brainstorming more usable ideas for next time.

There was a lack of a tutorial. The game is pretty intuitive but it would be better if there were at least some signs in the background with the controls like Arrows to move or SPACE to jump . 

Short level, in the end it was a little too short and didn't challenge the player very much. I would like to spend more time on interesting level design next time.

The last thing is kinda out of my control but the voting period was only 2 days and that sucks on so many levels. This was the first game jam that i participated in that had the voting period SHORTER than the game jam itself. For that reason i will probably not join this jam in the future and will always try to find out how long the voting period is before joining.

What did i use and learn

I already mentioned Gdevelop a few times but i cant praise it enough. Don't get me wrong it still has quirks, every tool has some. But it has the best on-boarding experience form any game engine that i have used. Although i can only compare it to Unity, Godot and UE4 since i haven't used Construct or Gamemaker. The fact that i can make a HTML5 Build and it just works amazes me. 

If you've ever searched for copyright free music, you know that its hard to find good music.  But i solved this problem! You just have to search it in Japanese! Trust me it works like a charm. Here are some music sites that you can use for your next game: Dova Syndorme, Chirico Music. Just don't forget to credit them !

Conclusion

In the end i'm really happy for what i created in just 60 hours. The little art that i created looks decent and i like the little comic that i created. Ill try to improve my art skills and get more familiar with Gdevelop to hopefully get a #1 overall someday.