Hello!
This weekend I participated in GMTK's 2023 Game Jam GMTK's 2023 Game Jam, which was an absolute blast. This is the third game jam I have been to, but the first one I just sorta hung out and talked to people and the second one I only assisted my team with some minor level-design stuff; this was the first game jam where I put my head down and made something from scratch, all by myself. I didn't have the bandwidth this weekend to put in the maximum amount of time (it's a little different when it starts while you're still at work and you're not physically present at the game jam), but I still managed to put in 17 hours in the span of two days making a game (or rather, it ended up being a little demo).
The theme for this year's game jam was "Roles Reversed", which you could interpret however you'd like. I had a few thoughts in my head at first - a princess rescuing a knight, a comedy game where horses ride people (which I'm still kinda into) - but I decided to keep it simple and go with a 2D platformer, which I have actually never made before. My thought was to make a platformer game where the player shoots at enemies, but then a timer would be running and when it finishes counting down, suddenly the game world changed and the enemies are the ones with the guns, and they try to shoot you. The player could then build-up points or "mana" or something the better you do dodging enemies in the "reversed" world, and then you can use those earnings to have more success when the gun is back in the player's hands.
As is tradition for me, I bit off more than I could chew in my head and I had to reel it in and make something much smaller (I am also way too neurotic and detail-oriented to "go for bulk" in a game jam). So my game, which I call Reverse Rabbit based on the theme and the main character, is more of a demo for some of the mechanics that I would like to include in this theoretical game. I do plan on making a more fleshed out version of this game eventually, so stay tuned! I think that's the power of a game jam, is that it forces you to do something in a short time frame so you can get your creative juices flowing, and you can always take what you learned and did and expand on it.
I have my build for this game jam posted here on my site (though I am cheating, I actually added the sound effects after time was up, so this version posted on my site here has a little more pizzazz). The art for this game comes from Kenney's Pixel Line Platformer tileset, which looks very nice and was easy to use. You can go to the "Portfolio" tab of this website or click the link below in this blog post to play the game:
It's been a bit since my last blog post, and I've made a ton of progress on my FPS game (built a whole stage). I also have some more technical notes from what I learned during this game jam. I'm going to save both of these for some later blog posts, and I plan on posting more frequently again here. Until next time!
--Josh