Busy weekend, but wanted to throw down 2 hours or so to put together a game for the jam.

I figured I could throw together a simple 2D platformer were your climbing a tower and get a small amount of polish inside 2-3 hours. Instead I spent 1.5ish hours dealing with issues with an updated Unity version (I had updated because of a SSAO issue that existed in prior version). I ended up having to work on the project in 2 different vesions of unity (Tilemap editor only worked in the older version, all the input code only worked in the newer version).

This morning, I decided to try one sub version back from the 'newest' version and with some uninstalling/reinstalling/etc of packages in the package manager, I managed to get a version of unity that worked for both.

I got a level build… might be slightly inspired by 'Getting Over It,' but no audio/polish/etc. oh and your a cube, because ofcourse you are ;).

Well. I guess not to bad for about 3 hours of work with much of it spent fighting with Unity and an apparent lack of regression testing before versions are put out.

Definately not the game I am most proud about, but I am happy to have got something submitted.

What Was My Goal?

My goal was to create a game that involved flying between worlds and overcoming challenges. Throw in some dialogue. Shake and Stir.

What Went Well?

• I managed the flying between worlds, the related level transitions and some basic dialogue in regards to the shopkeepers.

What Went Not So Well?

• I overscoped. The game concept was probably to big for a single person over a game jam weekend. Especially when combined with the schedule of the Jam. I ended up with nothing more then stubs for most of the levels, with not much intresting to do with them.
• Modeing/art, as usually, for me didn't go very far.
• I didn't manage to have time to create a quality main menu or options menu (I have code to support x/y invert on the camera and audio channel level slidders, but I didn't have time to wire it all up)

What Did I Take Away?

• I have already got some good feedback regarding the core idea (flying between worlds and overcoming challenges) even with the roughness of the presentation and the incompleteness of the levels.
• I think I have a functional core loop, just needs some expansion (few more connected and varried mechanics) and some levels to do with it (and the ovious art upgrades).
• After spending a few hours fleshing out the levels that were only stubbed in, v1.1 is a much fuller and varried experiance, which got to about the level I was hoping to get with my levels.

I overscoped (again - seems to be a thing), but did manage to get the whole game done, just not to the level of polish I was hoping. I am excited to have implemented a save/load system, Dynamic(ish) UI for on screen controls between KB/Mouse vs Joystick.

Hello Alakajam!

My name is Jason. I have been making games in my spare time for around 2 years now (after a long break… I remember doing a few on a Lazer128 in basic and one in c/c++ in high school). Mostly Gam Jams, but I also did a 12 games in 12 weeks challenge a while back.

I am going to be watching for the theme and will be making a game if I can find some time to put into it this weekend.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone makes!

Frequently Used tools: Unity, VSCode, Blender, GIMP, Audacity, LMMS, Abundant Music, ChipTone