GMTK Game Jam 2021 Devlog

The GMTK21 game jam was last week and I decided to participate

Originally I had decided not too but as I sat on the toilet at saturday at 5am, I read the theme “joined together”. As I laid back down to get a few more hours of sleep I slowly started to think about the different things I could do to make a small game over the next couple of days.

I had even less time than usual since I had my nieces birthday party on saturday so I couldn’t even work on the game that day. I honestly only had one choice on what to make since I was working with so little time. I had to make a platformer. At this point a few years into doing game development I have really gotten a solid hold on making a platform. I had the controls up and running that morning without any real idea with what I was going to make.

I was also a little worried about making a game too difficult or complicated. I had just finished the GoGodotJam the week before. And let me tell you, the feedback was not great. People are mostly nice in comments so it was until I got my ranking I was able to fully understand how bad my game design really was for that jam. I’m still licking my wounds from that one, I can’t even bring my self to make a devlog about it. But maybe subcribe and keep an eye out for it since I do plan to make one right after this.

So I have to make a platformer, I can’t make it too complicated, and I need the theme joined toether.

My first Idea was going to be two characters where you can control both but the controls are inverted and you need to get both of them on the same platform to win. I found this very limiting, it was not at all fun and almost impossible to design levels around.

I also then brought it a mechanic where you could place platforms to manipulate the inverted player. But it just turned into a game where you would just place a block whenever you didn’t want the player to move. It was too easy and made the game pointless.

So eventually I just gave up and made it so you just need to switch between them. The twist then became, what if they couldn’t only use specific platforms and they had to work together to get to the goal. That’s simple, it’s not unique, but I really only have 24 hours to do this so better to have a playable product than one that is unplayable.

So I implemented that with a simple controller in the player script.

That was it for Saturday Morning, I was off to my Nieces birthday and had a great time. I really took the expectation off for this jam. My attitude was essentially, I’ll make something. I just want to participate because I want to get out there and get to know other people in this space and get to know the community and for them to get to know me. I’m not trying to win or create a mind blowing mechanic or experience. I just wanted to be in the mix.

On Sunday I had to design the levels.

Okay I thought. Let’s keep it simple. You don’t want to repeat your last mistakes. What was wrong the last time you did this?

1. It wasn’t clear to the player what to do

2. they didn’t have instruction

3. It was too hard

4. The fail state reset the entire level and levels where reasonably large

So what could I do to remedy these issues. The First thing I decided on is to make the levels single rooms. Too make it really quick to reset if you failed the level.

The other thing that I did. Was make sure there was a steady build up in instructions for the player.

The first two levels are ridiculously easy. Just to give a sense of what it is we’re actually doing. I also made the instructions quite clear.

It also helps that some of the mechanics I didn’t even think of straight away. The idea that they could jump on each other, didn’t even come up until the forth level. This just came about because I was struggling to come up with interesting puzzle ideas.

I also put in buttons to trigger more platforms to give a bit more dynamics to each level as well. I came up with a really cool system to make each tile go down one by one, which was my favourite thing to implement. It was really satisfying to code that up and see it come to life in the game.

I busted out the levels and got to work on sound and ui. I recyled the sounds I made for the last game and used a song from Eric Skiff to play in the back ground, I link his work below.

I spent some time on the instructions, which just ended up being a massive label on the first level. But whatever, it communicates the point.

Then I did up the game page graphics and put together a nice page and icon. Something that I skipped in my last jam but I’m realising after this, it’s really important to get noticed when you’re in a sea of other games.

So I wrapped that up and hit that submit button on sunday afternoon. I’m in australia so the deadline for me was actually 4am monday but I didn’t want to sit there at night tweak every little thing so I just plonked it up and jumped into the garden to help the wife do some landscaping in our yard.

And I did not expect to get the reponse I did. I woke up the next morning to a sea of notifications. It was played 200 times in the 24 hours. That was insane for me. I don’t really have a following yet (hit that sub button to help me out). So I’ve just do to put it down to making the icon and game page look good and probably a lot luck. I’m learning, Presentation is really important. Makes sense giving the visual nature of this hobby. But If you knew me in real life, presentation is not my thing. I’m actually the worst at marketing.

But I am really stoked at achieving this, even if I don’t rank well, I was able to get eyes on my product which is a big enough deal for me. As far as I can tell, it’s around the 50^th most rated game in the jam, which out of over 5k entries is absolutely mind blowing. I cannot believe that.

I had a lot of fun playing other people games, it’s truly amazing to see what people can achieve in 48 hours. And Some of the mechanics that people have come up with are really beautiful.

What could I have done better. There’s not visual when you switch between the fox and her shadow. So you don’t know if you actually made the switch when you hit the button.

The level design is a bit janky too, often when you’re jumping you will hit your head on the platforms above, which just inst fun.

Also people have said that there’s no coyote time but there is, so maybe I should have tuned that a little as well.

Over all I had a lot of fun, expecially taking the pressure off and just making something simple. Game Jams are a stressful thing but I think if you remove some of your own expectation then you can reduce that stress a little. But I don’t know, I’ve only done two so far so I can really comment.

watch on youtube

Play the game here!