Scribble Exploration's Post-mortem Review

First Idea

My first idea after seeing the tileset I used was a tabletop RPG type game where you experience the game as the pieces the player's are moving about. You would've been able to move more than one piece with some kind of strategy in mind, and explore some zones, find items, follow a story, battle enemies. On top of that I wanted the fights and exploration to have an extra dimension: a shift from top down to a platformer side view. It would allow you to close distances that are too far apart in (X, Y) but just besides each other in (X, Z). And all that in 48 hours.

Needless to say I didn't finish any of that. There're no teammates, items, different enemies. I barely could add turn based movement with a flawed A* algorithm with point and click mechanics. Fortunately though, I had time to close the game loop...

Actual Execution

The moment to moment gameplay consists of simply moving to and exploring tiles. As you do, you accumulate explored tiles, of which you have to discover every one (more than 2000) to win. To make it more dynamic, in the last 40 minutes I had to finsih and export the game, I repurposed the pathfinding alogrithm and added a random walker enemy that can override your tiles and claim them as its own. In this manner, you have to compete and eat each other's path until one of you has every tile as their own.

The way I implement the amount of tiles is counting tiles added to the points array of the pathfinding algorithm. Because of that, I don't know if the game is actually winable. You would have to explore the whole map (which is huge) and hope that I didn't leave any tile out of reach/bounds...

To anyone crazy enough to try, I wish you luck and also, why?? So if anyone does (doubtful), as a reward, I'll continue developing the game and give you access to dev versions as I develop. A great exchange!!! You give me your sanity and I give you more of the game that made you lost it in the first place :D. Please, don't clog up my email rushing to get on this unforgettable deal. There's enough for every one of you!

Wrapping Up

I actually quite like my initial idea so I'll maybe add some of those features I talked about at the start, and maybe complete a TTRPG like experience with some coop elements and some story to go along with it. But don't hold your breaths. I said I would continue on all my Jam games and... There was none that I completed as I would've liked, actually.

Express your enthusiasm and I might follow up with that promise!

Thank you.