Game-A-Week games:
All of the games below were made with a week worth of time for each.
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icon to see design process!
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Press SPACE to jump - A game about.. thinking out of the box? I think?
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- This game was chronologically the first game I've produced entirely by myself. From visuals, code to design - all within a week.
For the context: All of the games within Game-A-Week had a theme given to everyone and the theme for this game was supposed to be "JUMP".
So immediately, I had to think of a concept that would be interesting for me specifically. I knew that the easy way to approach this topic would be to modify and play with mechanic of "jumping" in games, but it felt too simple/boring to me.
I brainstormed all the concepts related to jumping and voted which concept I like the most.
Settling on the idea that often comes up in video game tutorials, a phrase: "Press X to start" made me want to make a game which would start in that exact manner.
Then after coming up with basic theme for a game I could move towards - that being a game that tries to subvert player's expectations - I started (as always) with a sketch of the general gameplay.
I knew that due to limited time and my lack of coding skills, I could not make a game that is heavy in content, nor has very complicated mechanics. This decision also allowed me to focus more on the narrative/visual/conceptual aspect of the game, rather than it being a polished working product.
It is good to mention that the goal of making game a week was to make polished short games, but as it was our first game in the lineup, we did not have that many expectations set on us.
One of the aspects in games that I find really important, is to strike a good middle between the gameplay and narrative. It was always important to me to give player an enjoyment on both intellectual level and the entertainment level. It is why in the phase of concepting I also put a big emphasis on balance between mechanics and narrative, so that one doesn't overtake the other.
After the concepting session, it was time to actually take care of the game-making.
First I tired to make the most out of the concepts I made, and quickly modelled a base model for the character that player would either play, or talk to.
They were inspired by the DS3 Father Ariandell that is basically stuck in his chair, not able to move. It fit well with my idea that the player would be a prisoner in a cell that the only way to get out of is by jumping. But of course, player cant jump. And that was the catch.
When developing the game I had a great deal of troubles with the code, as I never actually coded the proper movement system into the game. To avoid making this an focus of my time put in the game, instead I used my 3 braincells and made the most barebones dungeon-crawler movement system in which you could move only by arrow keys/wasd (no mouse).
Movement system that I implemented, was by no means perfect. In fact it lacked one of the most important things- which was collisions.
If the player cant collide with obstacles like walls, what to do?
Solution was: to simply allow them to do that.
This led me to make a very important decision regarding the narrative itself. I could've chosen to keep the game's narrative to be a simple prisoner vs obstacle kind of deal. However the phrase "Press X to start" kept creeping up on me as if I could untilize it.
In the moment of enlightenment I realized that this phrase would not be directed to the character player is playing as - but the player themselves. Which would incetivise me to make the solution to the puzzle of "how to jump over a gap when you cant jump" - a literal breaking the rules of the game.
As the game had limited time to be released and I had to cut corner even with the visual part of the game, I decided that the solution to the puzzle that I would present to a player would be to encourage them to break the game! A cheap tactic for sure, but for the first game it felt just right to represent what I love about the games the most. Player's creativity.
This was by no means a perfect solution. Looking back at it, I probably would phrase a lot of hints towards the breaking of the 4th wall way clearer, and make the process more streamlined, but at the time I needed ideas and solutions quickly as I lost a lot of time on code itself.
I made a bridge outside of the walls of the map that player could cross if they phased through a wall as the original way to solve the puzzle. However I was banking on people figuring out different solutions by themselves.
And it was what happened - I had few people managing to pass the gap by spamming the "move forward" button so fast that gravity couldnt kick in. Or someone being able to get on the roof of the room by using slow gravitation to propell them upwards. There were many different solutions and I loved every single one of them. Even though the game had its limits on how could a player realistically solve the puzzle, just the fact that I managed to create this experience of finding your own solution was good enough for me to conclude this game as more-or-less success.
There were issues regarding intentionality of my design when creating it, but I really did want people to be the ones that find a solution to the question that I gave in the game.
In the end, as it was the first game out of 10, I had a good jumping off point as to what kind of games I wanted to make. It became really clear to me that I value narratives that intertwine with reality. A game that goes beyond fiction and asks the player about what they should do, always felt like the right way to approach meaning in games.
While mechanical design lacked a lot in the project itself, as the only intentional design decisions were making a pit and not allowing player to jump - the sporadic nature of bugs, and game breaking came after I made that initial step, and figuring out where to go from there was simple.
Grenzgebeit - A game about creating walls and borders.
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- Second theme that we were given was BERLIN. This was one of the subjects that gave me quite a lot of trouble in the concept phase.
Reason for that was the experience I had with the city itself was not very interesting to me. A lot of people that I had the classes with had some cool ideas as how to represent their personal view on it but me? I don't really had anything interesting to pour onto a game format. This led me to think of alternatives and a completely different structure of design.
Instead of making a concept list (as I did with PRESS SPACE TO JUMP game) which would brainstorm ideas related to Berlin as a place - instead I went the route of how could I make the game about Berlin have meaning.
I started by asking some questions about the game. Some more design related like scope, challenge, learnings etc. I was hoping that by answearing these questions I could focus down on the game's parts that mattered in gameplay, rather than doing something out of the box. In other words: I wanted to try and create a mechanically-tight game to see whether I could make it interesting.
Even in this early stage I could see the problem of gameplay loop being very unrewarding in terms of complexity, but I decided to ignore it for now to move forward with the concept.
Towards the start of concepting phase I decided early on that I wanted to do slightly more serious game about dictatorship in Germany, especially the infamous berlin wall - which is one of the most important structures were built in Berlin during the WW2.
At the same time I struggled with the idea that the concept could be insensitivie to the people that experienced that history. So I decided not to address the actual inspiration behind the game directly, only taking from facts that happened from reliable sources and not giving any opinions on the matter to stay as objective as possible.
I did intend on doing one thing for certain - and that was making player be the indirect cause of the events that play out in the game.
The discussion of games with meaning that question player's actions is one of the pillars that I wanted to test with the game, but I think it would be too far fetched to say that I intended on that being the main discussion surrounding the game's experience. I wanted player to question their actions, but because I lacked the coding capability to do anything other than win-or-lose condition, the concept became really flawed because of it.
Around half way into the development, I basically created a very "mechanically-tight" system of Tower Defense for the game before I realized that I couldnt follow through with the idea 100%. There were too many mechanics to code and too many things to take care of so many things from the original concept was cut.
In the end, I focused down on 3 types of defences and 2 types of "enemies" that player had to stop.
Wall - Tripwire - Lampost.
It was a good insight as to how some features of the game may become obselete with its design flaws (such as the wall being borderline useless when the lamppost does the better job at everything that the wall does).
Then I added more serious tone to the game by making it darker with somewhat menacing music and that would be it right? Well not quite.
I wanted the experience to be somewhat scary and serious, but by making it only a wall buidling simulator- it would not immerse the player in the game theme. So I decided to give player a role by introducing "The Taskmaster". A person that gave you the task of designing a wall to prevent people from escaping. That way player could feel the actual imporance of what they were doing.
Granted, the game still looked very unpolished which took you out of the experience, but at the time it was the best I could do with limited time.
Sufler - A game about being a bad prompter.
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- This game is very interesting.
And I am not saying this as an creator of it prising their own work, but as a critique of my own design philosophy.
Unlike all the other games on this list, this one is by far the most abstract of them all, for seemingly no good reason.
I had to take way more time than usual to come up with a good concept for this game, as the theme was very very vague. Unlike the previous ones in which the object of the game was clearly defined, be that mechanic or "a thing", this one was a concept. A concept of 3 acts in the stageplay. Three acts in narrative? The uncertainity that this topic created made me surprisingly way less confident at my own ideas regarding it.
So I tried to do what I do best and experiment.
I happened opon this video during the conception process and decided to run with the very vague idea of a stageplay.
I knew that I wanted to make an text heavy game with dialogue choices that mattered, so I started to fiddle around with plugins (or packages if you want to be specific) for unity.
The one I started using was INK, which took way too much of my time to figure out.
The reason for that is that INK is not made for 3D games but 2D ones (at least it its unaltered form) and that led me to get some errors when implementing it to my project.
I managed to push through though and based on the plan I made during the concepting phase, done the entire script.
The choices that player makes in the game count towards the total IMP variable, that is later read and executed as an ending. It is why some choices grant you 1 point and some none. I made it as a point system instead of making entire routes mostly due to time limitation - but I think this way the game is slightly less predictable with the outcome.
As I said at the start, this game is rather a big departure from what I consider a good game. There are almost no "mechanics" other than predetermined paths player can take during the play. And while the narrative is implemented as gameplay, it hardly counts as something worthwhile in my opinion.
I suppose it is the same criticism that Id have with visual novels, as they also implement narrative as the main gameplay, while it can hardly count as gameplay by my definition. I digress.
The visuals of the game were inspired by films by creative director David Lynch, especially Twin Peaks and it's RED ROOM.
In this project I also made use of an character animation library Mixamo, that allows you to automatically rig and attach animations to models. It came in handy as I did not have time to either rig or animate the character properly.
I tried to pick up the least motion heavy animations for this game to make sure that the tone stays more or less somber. I think back to the games like pathologic, which maybe subconsciously influenced the game I was making.
It is one of those games where I cannot really explain my design process other than showing exactly where and why I cut corners. Even I dont fully comprehend how my brain comes up with certain concepts.
Puzzle Development - A game about playing a game from unhinged developer.
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- This is the third game in the series that utilized my fascination with meta-narratives/metafiction as a concept. While fourthwall breaking in games has been very heavily explored in games (even back in the day) I still find them fascinating due to how they try to reach to the player. This game (while short) was one of my countless attempts at creating this sort of interaction - with varied measure of success.
The theme of the project was to make something about one button and instead of following that principle I tried to make a conversation out of it. Something like a commentary on games that utilize the same mechanic over and over again.
But if you played the game you would know that is not what the game is about.
After making "Sufler" the nature of burnout started to really get to me. Who would have thought that coming up with a new idea after each week and transforming it into a playable product all alone - would be tiring?
The thing is, I never really experienced the real creative burnout in art or music before this. And as it was a semi-new experience to me, I really wanted to record it. So instead of finishing whatever I was doing with the game, I instead decided to completely disregard everything and put myself (as the fictional developer) and write down what I felt when trying to develop something during the burnout.
As always, the concepting of the game visual style started by sketchout of whatever came up in my head and making a realistic scope for the game. Again, as the game was supposed to be done in a week, I could not allow myself for anything too complex.
Chasmic.system - A game about exploring massive complexes with an lidar scan.
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PhysiX - A game where you play with physiX.
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SOID - A program in which you can play with Sinewaves/Oscilloscope.
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The Matter Of Perspective - A game where you get Bricked.
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Self Imposed Destruction (Upright!) - Barely working surreal world breaking simulator.
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TO BE UPDATED
GameJam Games:
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icon to see design process!
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Sound Eater - Everything about parrying sound.
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