I’ve entered this week’s 72 hour gamejam hosted by Gamejolt with PewDiePie in which the top 10 games would be played by the man himself and broadcasted to the internets and his endless number of fans. As if making games wasn’t reason enough, having the chance to have your game broadcast to millions of his fans sure was another great one.

tl;dr : Didn’t finish the game. Still had fun.

So I’ve put up some time to make a game this weekend, starting on friday night (16 hours late), I didn’t plan much, booted Unity, Maya and Photoshop, and started to make stuff. I’ve came up with a small idea based on Boson X, and wanted to make a fast paced game. I started to model tubes or portals and a spaceship, and laid the foundation of what could be a level.

Screenshot 2014-11-24 09.31.36

First of, I set it all so the level would fall down on you, making the camera look up, it would give the impression of moving forward. I then changed it to side to side, only changing gravity’s axis. Which, again, I changed by making the player move so I would have realistic jumps, instead of moving the world.

About physics. I didn’t plan much of the stuff I wanted to make, I just did it on a necessity basis. So first I made a custom gravity to pull the ship back in the center after a jump. I had the world rotate instead of the ship due to jump + turning issues that would dislocate the ship to places I didn’t wanted it to go. I’ve later removed the jump and animated it, so I would have more control on the behaviour, which turned out pretty nice actually.

Screenshot 2014-11-24 09.31.52

I had a level, level parts, obstacles and items. I soon ditched the obstacles and put bigger ones with doors, changing the game mechanics. Now you would have to jump above the empty space in the doors. Which worked quite nice. At a certain point you would get enough speed and get to the end level and be warped to another one.

Unfortunately, I didn’t finish the game, due to lack of skill, the theme being highly abstract “fun”, mindset maybe, or just because I went to see Interstellar (which was aweeesooomee!!). Overall I worked around 20h on the game, which is not enough to make it. Mistake number one was to not plan. Eager to make something new and something move on screen, I jumped in, thinking, “mehh, It’ll be a small game, I’ll just make this and that, and it will all work”.. but nooo.. I did had to doodle my thoughts into a piece of paper when I was stuck. Mistake number two, take time to fucking plan your game!! Do not start placing things around without knowing what you want to do. Ok, I got it. Mistake number 3, due to the lack of planning, changing scope delayed progress, making it harder to see the end of it, and ultimately missing the deadline.

Screenshot 2014-11-24 09.32.11

Overall, it was awesome! I’ve not been making these gamejams for some time and it felt great. I’m not sad I didn’t finish it, because I’ve learned awesome stuff while making it. Now I guess, I’ll enter the next competition, letting this game go, since it didn’t struck me as fun, so.. it was a great run :)
According to CompoHub.net, The 96 Jam with rules is next, and there’s always the One game a month, so I’ll see you around ;)