1 Bit Jam

This blog came in a bit late so let me get you upto speed. This week I took part in 1 Bit Jam. The premise of the jam is that you only use 2 colors, on and off. I stuck to the basics; black and white. The theme that won the most votes this time was 'Into the Depths'.

Design

This was a great theme which lead to some fun ideas. My idea was that you are a mosquito who gets eaten by a person, and now are trying to survive The Depths of Hunger. In this 2D platformer you get to explore the various parts of the digest system.

The main scene is the stomach, a vast canyon filled with acid. Here the player has to survive and explore the burning acid to find a way out. You will fill find fibres that you can use to strengthen your armour and shells which will upgrade your armour to last longer in acid.

Once your armour is strong enough, escape the stomach from the backdoor win the game.

The Jam

I managed to put together a team with a sound designer and a game designer who helped me with collecting resources and finalising the design. I had a lot of fun with the art for this jam, the animations for the main character were a bit tedious, but I also drew a variety of assets for the game: two types of gates, diferrent spikes for hazards, floating platforms, title screen, game win animation and of course the tileset for the level.

As the Jam Deadline grew close, I realised I had spent quite a bit of time on Art and needed to focus on the platformer. I decided to make build for the game with less than a day from the deadline. I had managed to implement a basic platformer with a start and end scene. I ultimately submitted to the Jam.

I was a bit dissapointed that I had not completed all the features I would have liked include, especially since I drew the artwork for a lot of them. I did learn a useful lesson in time management and it has to do with the approach of my game developement.

For the last few jams I chunked up my workflow, I would draw the art for all the assets, implement it in code, and finally add audio. Which means that the last in line would always suffer, not for one feature but for many of them as many of them would fall short. But alas, I have learnt my lesson, I will collect resources and take action feature wise so everything that is included in the build will be as bad as the next.

There is still a lot work left in this game including the main feature. Water! so I do plan on working on it a bit more.

Upcoming

At the end of this month, I will be participating in Global Game Jam! I am really excited as this will be my first in person jam. After spending a lot of game development solo or on the internet it this will be a welcome new experience.

~sailboat642