GameJam June 2021
Theme: "Joined Together"
Hosted by GameMaker's Toolkit
This jam lasted only 3 days. I was part of a team of 4, and we each did a tremendous job, pulling together all our strengths to show what we can achieve. I found opportunities here to reinforce what I've learned in the last year since Brackey's 2020 Jam, specifically linking systems together through a common system architecture.
The Opportunity
The goal is simple: Click on Ingredients to chain them together and accumulate a score. My teammate programmer focused on the rope physics and its Collection system, while I scattered my brain coding and connecting all of the small stuff: UI, Scene Loading, Scoring, Animations, and Launching the Ingredients across the screen. The other two teammates did an amazing job with Music & Art (something that us programmers are notorious for forgetting about!).
The Challenges
Having only one other programmer on the team, organization wasn't an issue as we both kept the folder structure simple. We easily pulled in resources and had multiple meetings over Discord. Our biggest challenge was Time, as we had to cut out several features we wanted to include so we could make the deadline.
Originally we wanted to create a Recipe Order system where the Player would have to connect specific ingredients, but that was scrapped in favor of a more relaxed clicker game. We instead opted for a Timer, allowing the Player to click everything and just enjoy their experience.
What I Learned
Finding the Fun
I think we finally figured out how the game was going to play about halfway through the weekend. The realization came to us that the game just wasn't fun. The Recipe cards were waiting for the right combination of Ingredients, and the Player was just waiting for the right Ingredients to randomly spawn. We scrapped the requirement and adapted the Recipe cards into additional bonuses if the combination just happened to contain them. After that, the game became much more fun and faster paced. Clicking everything just to build a giant chain became our new goal, and I'm happy we made that decision.
Unifying Architecture
I think we finally figured out how the game was going to play about halfway through the weekend. The realization came to us that the game just wasn't fun. The Recipe cards were waiting for the right combination of Ingredients, and the Player was just waiting for the right Ingredients to randomly spawn. We scrapped the requirement and adapted the Recipe cards into additional bonuses if the combination just happened to contain them. After that, the game became much more fun and faster paced. Clicking everything just to build a giant chain became our new goal, and I'm happy we made that decision.
Time Management
This time around, my co-programmer was more present during development, and that led to more changes that I had to adapt to. As the deadline approached, we began coding sloppily, adding scripts just to solve single issues. While it ended up working for the project it was intended, that approach would not have worked for a longer project. The lesson I will take away is that, if it ever comes down it, meeting a Deadline is more important than building a more maintainable code base.