JamalCreates, Tachy Bunker, and I (PepperBoi) made a game for the Brackeys Game Jam 2022.1 in one week. If you don’t know what a game jam is, it is a competition where a group of people come together to make games, normally with a short time limit and/or a theme that you have to base your game around. We ended up making a puzzle platformer where you can make the ground disappear. How did we make it?
Day One:
And the theme is… It is not real
So after the theme was announced we did not have any ideas that jumped out at us because we had come into the jam wanting to make a highscore arcade type game but we felt the theme didn’t really fit that type of game too well. We decided to come up with other new ideas, these included:
- Idea 1: a boxing game where you were payed to lose so the competition was not real a real
- Idea 2: a platformer where characters changed sprites to show that they are not real
- Idea 3: a platformer where you choose what things (the ground or enemies) are not real
But we weren’t sure about these idea so by the end of day one we just decided to have a platformer character done and brainstorm some more the next day.
Day Two:
Day two was mostly another planning day. We had decided to remove Idea 1 because we weren’t sure how we would make the gameplay challenging or if it would even fit the theme, although I still think it could make an interesting game. We also expanded on Idea 2 and decided to keep Idea 3 in our back pocket.
So Idea 2 would be a story game where you go around and make friends who slowly got less detailed slowly turning from a detailed pixel art sprite into a white square. But as we conceptualized our ideas we realized we didn’t have gameplay direction and the scope was way too big in hindsight. That leaves us with 5 days left with only a platformer character and an idea (Idea 3) where some people already had playable game.
Day Three:
At the start of day two I decided to add some polish to the platformer character by adding coyote time (you can jump for a bit after falling) and differing jump heights based on how long you hold the jump button, and Jamal made the player art.
Later in the day I made the enemies patrol movement where the enemies choose two or more points in the air and flies to them. Then, I added the main mechanic of making the floor and enemies alternate being real.
Day Four:
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make a precision platformer or a puzzle platformer because I knew it could be better as a puzzle platformer but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make interesting enough levels. So I did some research on how to make good puzzle levels by playing a few puzzle games on itch.io and a crucial GMTK video.
What I got from all of it is that you need to be able to change things. If you only have the player, the ground and enemies the player can only do so much. So I decided to add boxes that the player could pick of act like keys because you’ll need them to get to high places and I would remove enemies for now and just focus on the ground becoming not real.
And the rest of day four was mostly implementing boxes. It was so buggy. Bugs included: trapping the player under it, randomly being pushed into the ground when you jump on it and even more stuff that I probably forgot because of trauma. Fun!! But after I got it mostly working I made a test level (which was the first iteration of the second to last level in the current game) and I felt pretty good about it. A few other changes to make it more of a puzzle platformer were to remove a double jump and a static camera.
Day Five:
On day five I felt like I had a pretty good product to get some friends playtesting, so I made five levels and the consensus was the levels are WAYYY too hard. So I made some of the jumps easier and I added another level to make hardest level easier but then after that I decided to add a little puzzle after but the new level 4 became too hard and where most people quit but because my playtesters already knew how to play the game so they got past it relatively easily.
Day Six:
On day six all the art that Jamal was working on was added, which was a huge confidence booster because I could tell the game was coming together. Because Tachy Bunker wasn’t available to make much more than one song so I found sonniss and they had some nice free sounds effects that I added into the game.
Day 7:
On the final day Jamal uploaded the final few necessary things in the game (the background and the main menu). I put the background in the game with moving clouds that add a lot to the game because a static background can be boring. Tachy Bunker also somehow made the game soundtrack in about ONE HOUR (listen here) and he had the good idea to make the song muffled when the is ground not real.
I felt like I couldn’t make any more levels without adding more mechanics so I decided to make shooting enemies that break the wooden boxes and metal boxes that don’t break. This allowed me to make three more levels around 1am and to edit an earlier level to be more difficult and I made it the last level.
Post-Jam:
When I am writing this it is 5 days into the rating period and most players think it is too hard and get stuck somewhere in the first 4 levels (mostly the fourth) and whenever I watch people try the first few levels I wonder why I made them that hard. So I made an updated version and put it on my website which people say is a lot easier but still pretty difficult. So if you want to try it for the jam play it here and if you want to play the improved version play it here.
