Timeline is placed in summer time, middle of July 2022, one of my friend (@henrykuh) invited me to join the Game Jam that he is going to host in Aug 2022. In the meantime, he has also invited me to rejoin the community MatchWorkshop , and become the headmaster of the Game Programming deparetment. Therefore, this Game Jam is treated as an opportunity to collaborate with other headmaster from other department in this community. 😕
I believe networking is a massive part of the Game Jam; hence I have decided to join the event without too much hesitation. This Game Jam came in just about the right time since I just ended another project last month.
❓ About Game Jam
Game Jam’s full name are 5th DIY Game Jam: Surprise.
This is hosted by DIY GM. Entire event
is about 1 month, it’s a lot longer compare to regular Game Jams due
to the COVID-19.
The theme is already announced through the title, surprise.
🔰 Joined! Meet the team
I was in the MatchWorkshop community once a while ago, but we didn’t have time and a chance to get to know each other well. This is the right time for me to network with other people who already have working experience in Taiwan’s Game Industry. Team and role are listed below:
- Kyrie （Game Desinger）
- Yi （3D Artist）
- 黑攻 （2D Artist、Composer）
- 特里斯卡 （2D Artist）
- Jen-Chieh Shen （Engineer） <- That’s me! 😎
I reckon Yi and Kyrie are two essential pieces in this group.
Without their contribution, our game will simply be a disaster.
Yi is responsible for making our characters (Minions and Alice)
look alive, which requires countless hours to accomplish such a heavy
task. Kyrie made a decent GDD, and shows his passion during the entire
Game Jam.
What about Jen-Chieh (me)? He made the entire game (programming-wise)
within 24 hours. It could be impressive but expected. 🙂 All I want to
say is THANK YOU to the group!
💡 Design, and Programmer View
First of all, I didn’t come up with the game idea. The game design had been established before I joined the team. Therefore, I will only talk about the game-making (engineering) part of the game. Here are some issues that I think are worth mentioning for the record:
- GDD is incomplete, lack of details
- We don’t know who came up with the idea? (even at the very end of the event)
- No core design principles, game idea could not be established
Nice reminder, this is NOT for me to blame on anyone in the group. I am simply pointing it out to help myself do better in the future. Anyways, we eventually made the game! Congratulation! 🎉🎊 Seeing the finished game always makes me feel good! ✨
🖼️ Screenshots
💬 Conclusion
Let’s move on to the conclusion; I sense this project is great compared to many games that have been submitted to the same event. Even though the game isn’t a complete complete game, but it has everything a game needs, and there are more details in the game. I am proud of myself in this event! 👍 The only thing I have in mind so the game can be more inclusive is that we don’t have time to debug and playtest more. I wish we could have more time or improve our time management during the event! 🙏