Making of: Failure Needed [Wowie Game Jam 3.0]

Introduction

Right after participating in my first ever game jam, the Brackeys Game Jam 2021.1, I was left with the itch to start a new one, I had seen this jam on the page before, but didn't pay much attention to it. Only until recently when I saw it going to start soon. I got reminded just before university classes, which started at the same time as the Jam. I saw the muted theme reveal video and got to sketch some ideas about the game while listening to the lecture.

Theme

This time though, I didn't have what to expect from the Jam's theme and got a bit stumped, but quickly arrived at an idea that later came to be my submitted game. I had the initial idea that the player would be on an arena-type space with enemies coming in waves. On death, the player would gain health and had to survive long enough for the floor to crack and reveal a void, into which you'd fall and advance a level.

Art

For the art, I knew I wanted to go simple and inverted the color palette I used on my previous Jam game and went with a light background with a black for objects. I opened Aseprite and got to work scribbling some ideas for a character, and ultimately chose to go with an arrow or pointer of sorts which I could animate with 2 simple frames. Soon I had an enemy, a few attacks, the cracks, and a bomb that I couldn't implement (I just got the idea that they could advance the cracks one stage so it goes faster).

I won't go into naming every tile I did, but this is what the tileset looks like after I added some tutorial sprite towards the end of the Jam:

Code

For the code, I took some things from a previous project, originated from HeartBeast's tutorial series to make an Action RPG, but that I had to heavily adapt to my situation. After my first Jam game, the main criticism was the clunky movement and so I wanted to make it more fluid and intuitive, arriving at the conclusion that I wanted to make the player rotate with the mouse. I later added an option for the whole movement system to use the mouse as an input and it stuck.

Wanting to use the cracks in the game, I later introduced the slowly breaking tiles. To accomplish this, I used an existing function in Godot to output an array with all the tiles from a given id, and every few seconds changed one into another tile, progressively turning into a hole in the ground.

At this point, I realized that I could do the same to randomly spawn enemies, pick-ups, and even add a few wall tiles to the already existing map, which added an element of slight procedural generation. The "hard-coded" map looks like this:

Game Design

Again, I had an easy time designing the game around my planned idea, and looking at an empty 40x40 canvas inside Godot, I decided to randomly fill it with walls slightly resembling a labyrinth. With everything else being generated at random, I implemented a cap on how many entities from a given category were to exist at once. For example, there can only be 30 enemies at once, and more will spawn if they're killed.

Regarding the theme, I decided to increase the amount of health the player had with each death. After 6 times, the player would gain a second attack that deals 2 damage, and enemies would spawn with half your max health, meaning they would grow stronger. Also, I made it so the HP-up would harm you, and the SP-up would slow you down by a bit. Lastly, the game would end if you fell into a void, of which my initial intent was to get the player to avoid these until they had no more option than to fall into it and die, only to win the game or advance a level. I only had time to throw in a win screen (I recently had the idea to replace it with "Congratulations, you lost!").

UI

For the UI, I created new assets and reused some from "Journey Before Destination", my previous game. I want to make an Aseprite file with all the letters I made for the titles. I inverted the colors in some of those I borrowed and added a drop shadow to give it an effect. I then added a button which I'm really proud of and feels great to just press over and over, and used it in a few menus.

All in all, I spent a big chunk of time during the second day and added all the menus and overlays you can see in the release for the Jam.

Sound and Music

And again, I can't take much credit for this other than being the one assigning each sound to the corresponding scene, and triggering them on queue. For sound effects, I used some assets from Heartbeast's Action RPG tutorial, and the music from Jim Hall. I got praise for these from some people, props to their creators for helping me polish my game.

The Future

I'd like to polish it a bit more, vary the sounds for one, add more levels once falling to the void before ending the game, and fix some bugs. I already am participating in another Jam a day after typing this, the Minimalist Jam. Also, I got into the Creative Habit Jam (Session 2) and the College Game Jam. Although they overlap, it doesn't mean I can't participate in both since they're compatible with one another. I'm especially excited to enter the first one and work on a project consistently for a whole month. I want to improve on inventory and dialogue systems, and so I'll make a slightly more ambitious game.

My Finished Games

Journey Before Destination: [https://touff97.itch.io/journey-before-destination-the-roguelike]