
Plus Zero
A postmortem on a game jam product. Play the demo here: https://hirohun.itch.io/o

Intro
It has been a month since I started making my game called Plus Zero. I finally have gotten to a point where I can see if the project has potential or not.
Game Jam
I started making Plus Zero for a game jam called SA Game Jam. This is an event that happens every year where people who want to make games are given a theme and 48 hours to make a game — usually digital. This year the them was crafting.
I decided to make something that was simple to make. Therefore I decided to make a puzzle game. The idea was that players had to match tiles. The tiles had to match with both the colors and the symbols. After the first 2 days I had a product that showed some potential.

Post Game Jam
After the game jam I got people to playtest. There were a lot of changes made in the next month. These included the colors, the UI, the core mechanics, the movement and many more.


Plus Zero can now be described as a minimalist 2D puzzle game, where the player has to match the symbol and color of the tiles. The player can craft new tiles by combining same color tiles together.
Reflection
When starting this project, I wanted to create a game that was simple to understand but could increase in challenge. I believe this game does that.
However, I do think some of the core mechanics surrounding combining could be simplified. Because of some of the core mechanics being harder to understand the game I had to explain each mechanic individually. Therefore the game becomes linear: there is only one way to solve this puzzle. This reduces the replayablity of the game.
In this project I tried to add “game feel” into every small interaction to help visually communicate rules to the player. This can be seen when the player combines or matches tiles, the tiles squash and stretch. Also when the user does a move that cannot be played the tiles wiggle. I think this had a great effect on the feel of the game. I also added level transitions to make the game feel more responsive and polished.
To make the game more understandable, I also added some short animations as tutorials to teach the player how the game works. This was easier than writing the rules out as the player had a better time remembering rules when they were shown to them.
If I were to continue this project I would simplify the core mechanics and create an algorithm to produce levels and puzzles.
You can play the demo here: https://hirohun.itch.io/o
