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Chain lightning.. sorta! Needs a bit of work.

[chikinwings]

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First post-jam weapon; Fish gun! Shoot fish at things and at lv3 they’ll stick to and chomp on your enemies. 

[chikinwings]

Awful Summer Jam 2017 - Headphone Hero Post-Mortem

So that’s the end of my third game-jam technically. Overall, it was a nice experience and even though 3 weeks is short by most standards, it still felt like a long-ass time somehow! Perspective of time can be a curious beast. 

So in this post all I’m really gonna do is briefly go over what worked, what didn’t, my regrets and what I might’ve done differently overall. 

Overall

I set out to make a game that was sort of a tribute to the bootlegs that have entertained me over the past couple of years. I’m a regular viewer of various streamers over at Vinesauce and bootlegs are a fairly common recurring nightmare for a couple of their team. 

Overall, it achieved the original goal in some ways though I feel it may have been done more successfully. I went for a classic 8-bit platformer with direct references to 7 GRAND DAD, “The Lion King” (a bootleg hack of The Jungle Book) and various other bootleg games played on stream. 

Honestly I was struggling to come up with something, like I wanted to make either a tribute game or a game styled like a bootleg and I kind of ended up somewhere in-between. Perhaps the idea would have been better had I more firmly picked a direction early on...

What I Liked

Mostly I like the approach I engineered for making levels. This all came together rather late in development, but it did allow me to make short, segmented levels surprisingly quickly and without much if any need to go into the code to set up boss areas, combat areas and distinct areas for the camera to move to. 

I like the feel of the game at least from my own perspective, enough that I am considering using the framework I built up to make something more substantial for my own pleasure rather than commercial (I’m not terribly convinced I’m ready to make anything I could sell just yet!). There’s various tweaks and improvements I could make to help with that goal.  

While it was last second stuff, I love the cover art Rebelmaren whipped up for me and I like the style of the tunes made by the artists whose music i used (credits on the game pages). 

I also liked the enemies I came up with, though I kind of wish I had maybe one or two more to maybe do more interesting things within the levels themselves. The twerking lion seemed to go down well with a few people in the discord and I’m glad they got some enjoyment out of it. 

What I Didn’t

The physics I engineered as well as my general programming technique still feels like it’s making things much more difficult for me than it needs to. Some of it is just because I never really did formal learning in compsci or software engineering and some of it is still some parts of Unity I haven’t quite worked out yet. 

I feel I’m limiting my idea scopes too much. This is the 2nd platformer I’ve made for a gamejam and one of many I’ve attempted to make over the years. I like me some platformer, but maybe branching out more would be healthy for me. As long as I’m interested in making such a game of course.

Regrets

Two Game Jams Is One Too Many

My first regret is taking on two game-jams at once. It seemed like a good idea at the time; I have an issue with over-scoping ideas which sort of plagued my first game-jam over at Github. 

I figured if I did two jams at once, I’d be forced to limit the scope of my games to something more reasonable if I wanted to finish both of them. In a way it worked, as the week-long jam game came out pretty good in the end, but Headphone Hero ended up over-scoped something terrible. I can’t help but feel both projects ended up suffering in the end though.

Going Solo

Going solo has its advantages, I mean I’m not waiting on anyone to complete work among other things. The downside is I can’t focus my energy on any one part of the project. It’s pretty tough pulling off all that by myself, especially on a project that had arguably already overscoped. 

It would have been nice to have an artist on board at least, or perhaps someone who could do some custom music that’d better fit the theme of the project. 

Overscoped.

I’ve mentioned it already but the project really suffered because I just simply set my sights too high. As a result, things like the audio ended up being squeezed in to the last day, which meant I had no real time to do sufficient sound balancing.

Speaking of, the back-loaded development cycle I ended up with gave me almost no time to get proper play-testing and tuning/polish done, so the game has undoubtedly suffered because of this in particular with some content being much more difficult/annoying than intended. 

Better Interaction with the Community

My activity on the forum and twitter was nonexistent and my participation in the discord was also kinda limited. I did try to interact with people more however, which is an improvement over my first jam where I talked to basically no-one the entire month. Perhaps this is just something that will improve over time and baby steps are the best course of action. 

This might not directly improve the game but it could lead to a larger pool of future potential teammates and play-testers. Greater feedback on my own projects and trying other people’s projects to get some insight into my own as well as providing feedback and hopefully doing the same for others. Could be nice!

Things to Consider for Next Time

If I were to do it over, I think I’d naturally try to scope my idea down into something simpler but more focused, allowing more time for feedback in particular. 

I’d also begin adding audio at an earlier step, as it’d give me more time to solve issues with sound that I barely got to tackle this time as well as balance it better so the important information was conveyed better (such as attacks hitting enemies, you can barely hear it in this game). 

While I make no guarantees, I may make a harder push to gain team-members so I’m not doing another solo effort. This will introduce its own challenges to overcome, but it may be worth it in the long term. 

I should definitely participate more in social fronts, promoting the project where I can (without being obnoxious about it) and staying active on social media. I should also spend more time interacting with fellow jammer’s projects, such as providing feedback, encouragement or playtesting. 

To summarize:

Smaller scope next time, more active community participation, more effort to get teammates, don’t do two game-jams at once!

[chikinwings]

It’s Done! It’s submitted and up on itch for the public! Wow I’m tired! I never want to look or think about or make games ever again, yaaaay!

https://shoehead.itch.io/dum

Grab it here for Windows, supports Controllers and Keyboard+Mouse

[chikinwings]

If for whatever reason that link doesn’t work or you’re not able to play, check out this playthrough below:

I did intend on posting this up on the day the jam was over but honestly I was too exhausted to really do it. I’ll likely go over that in a post-mortem later because there’s a lot I feel I could have done differently that would have made things easier for me and resulted in a more polished product. 

If you want to see other entries in the jam, head on over to AwfulJams.com where you can find a whopping 40 other free small games to play! There’s some incredible stuff there so go check em out.

All the issues with my project aside though, I’m glad I made it! It was a fun experience and I feel I’ve come away from it at least a little wiser. I think it’ll be a while before my next jam as I want to spend some time improving my basic skills (plus there’s some real life stuff coming up that might get in the way anyway), like my art and mathematics.

In the meantime I’m probably going to continue posting stuff to my art blog (itschikin), maybe posting some experimental stuff on this blog occasionally and I’m considering starting a blog where I play and give my thoughts on various games made by amateurs like me, giving constructive thoughts where I can.

With thanks to Rebelmaren for making the title art. Music credits:

"ChippyTune"

BBandRage

https://opengameart.org/users/bbandrage

Used under CC-BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

No modifications were made to the track used.

"Victory" "Australis Frontier"

celestialghost8

https://opengameart.org/users/celestialghost8

"Fast Level" "Beat'em Up Level" "Tnorns N Ropes" "Boss Cutscene" "Boss Intro" "Boss Main" "Thorns Boss"

@Wyver9

https://soundcloud.com/wyver9/

https://wyver9.bandcamp.com/

https://twitter.com/wyver9

Tracks used under CC-BY-SA3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

No modifications were made.

All music obtained from OpenGameArt.org and used either under Public Domain or Attribution based licenses. No creators credited endorse this work. .

[chikinwings]

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On the final day, I allowed the player to die

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All the enemy types I ended up with in the end. Look at them go. Now to spend the remaining time making a level or two for them to occupy.

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This one might be a nightmare to balance, but it sorta functions. 

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One boss down, one to go!

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Something to mark the start of the final week: All the features so far. 

This is gonna be a long week, but hopefully a fun one! I’m looking forward to getting the other enemy types in, I just want to get the bigger things in first; such as a level clear, proper weapon unlocking and player death. If I did things right, the major coding stuff should all be done by tomorrow however, leaving the rest of the week to more creative processes. As long as I don’t break anything major, should be good!

[chikinwings]

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Not inspired by anything in particular.. nosiree.

Kinda boring stuff, just wiring up game menu stuff

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HUD elements wired up aside the boss HP bar. Also progressed weapons a bit more!

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UI stuff today. Healthbar, weapon exp bar and boss health bar. None of it wired to code yet. 

[chikinwings]

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Getting somewhere. Not sure if I suck at my own platforming or if something’s off about the platforming controls themselves. Something to investigate over time!

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[chikinwings]

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Not feelin terribly well today, so just wired up animation states and gave the only enemy in the game a way to attack me. Kinda a crummy lightning effect but it might do for now. 

I’m quite happy with how the sprite animations feel so far at least.