Game4 and Autumn Lisp Game Jam

You might be wondering why there were no posts on the game development marathon I’ve been doing. Maybe you’d thought that I gave up after the admittedly underwhelming game3 having no actual game just some basic movement. And yeah, I felt burned up a lot, and considered skipping a month maybe - but then this happened.

So I thought - well, I just make the game during the game jam instead, and rest up until the jam begins. Yes, it means I will technically have less time to do this, but I did spend even less time on game dev last month, so it’s fine. I also got an unplanned vacation, so I guess I’ll actually have free time too.

Though, I lied a bit. The other reason I didn’t do anything is also because the next genre I wanted to work in is a puzzle platformer. And honestly, I don’t know what kind of puzzles to make. None seem appealing.

So after a bit of consideration, I’ve decided that can try to make something like a Lode Runner type of game. I already have the platformer engine from the very first game in this series, and originally I’ve planned that I would make a really simple 2D platformer, then in the subsequent game I will refine and improve it. Similarly, with the top-down games - first make a simple dungeon crawler, then take the blueprint and make an adventure with it. Unfortunately, the second game was a flop, and thus if I am to make the fifth game I’ll have to do everything from scratch.

So I’ve been thinking how I should handle the game. I guess I’m going to ditch the camera here, so the level fits the screen. It will make it a bit easier to reason about, and I guess I can always add camera back later if I really need to.

AI would be an issue though - I’ll need to implement some kind of path-finding for the 2D grid with gravity in mind. In other words, enemies should understand that they can jump down from cliffs if it will bring them on the same elevation with the player. Additionally, enemies shouldn’t just follow the shortest path to the player, as it will make them very predictable.

And if I have time, I can try putting on a twist to the formula. Not sure what kind of twist yet, but we’ll see I guess.

The jam starts in ~12 hours, which unfortunately means that it will begin while my work week isn’t yet ended. So I will have one day less already. Additionally, right now I’m in another city, and will lose another day on train to get back home. So this leaves me with 8 days instead of 10.

Hopefully it will not be an issue. Wish me luck!