Too much for one week

The first BlackthornProd Game Jam is coming to an end, and I managed to make this game in time. Now it's time to share my experience in this jam.

Day 1

This jam's theme was "Game Development". I think it's a hard theme to come up with an idea, but somehow in three hours I had the entire GDD ready.  And back then it seemed good enough for me! It was a game about someone playing an unfinished game, but the game becomes self aware and asks for that person's help to become a finished game. Ok, so I proceeded to Unity to start working.

First of all, I needed the game core working. It consisted in a cutscene controller and a narrated dialogue system. I didn't know how to program a cutscene and never created a dialogue system, which I had the idea of actually narrate the entire dialogue. I spent some hours watching tutorials and searching for a way of doing those things, and I the core of the game was done. The last couple hours was dedicated to testing and planing the next day.

Day 2
I had 5 acts to make. The first one was a generic rpg cutscene. I went to Photoshop and drew everything in the scene, including the characters animations and light effects. Then I went to my living room to record the sound of my curtain opening. When I started programing the cutscene, I stunbled upon a problem: the NPC movement in the cutscene. So I was back to Google for sometime until I got this right and finished this act. Meanwhile, I was talking to a friend about my fear in narrating this game, since I don't speak English. He volunteered to be the voice in my game, which I happly accepted!

Day 3 and 4
I spent the first hours editing the first audios my friend sent to me and testing the dialogue system with the audios. Then I proceeded to make act 2, which was an platform game. I don't know what happened, but this act was so hard to finish! It still may have some bugs, I guess I'm not used to program platform physics anymore. Also there was the boss attack pattern! Even with tutorials I had so many troubles programing it! These 2 days were basically fixing bugs and make this act work, and I almost dropped it. But I though it was important to the story, so I stick with the script.

Day 5
I didn't expect to spend 2 days in an act, I was very tired. I was working 13 hours everyday in this game, I realized I planned too big for just 1 week of development. But it was too late to go back, so I started act 3. It was not hard, in a few hours I managed to draw the entire act and make it work. My friend sent the remaining audios, so the rest of the day I was editing them and programing the cutscenes from act 2 and 3.

Day 6
My first idea for act 4 was a Binding of Isaac style game, but it started to not sound that fun as I was thinking in the beginning. After sometime thinking, I decided to create a shooter with Super Hexagon's movement. This act was not that hard either, in few hours it was done. I had only the final act, but first I tested the entire game to see if things were actually working. And I found bugs... Many minor and major bugs that I had to spend most of the day fixing! I still had to create the music, which I don't know how to compose, so I wanted the next day just for polishing and trying to come up with something for the music. The final act ended being just a walking simulator to the end of the game. I ended this day programming the remaining cutscenes.

Day 7
The final day. I spent this day creating sfx, particles and music. I did not have experience creating particles, so I only managed to create 3 simple ones. And for the music, I was having trouble creating anything using Bosca Ceoil, so I used Wolfram Tones site to create any piece. I only did one. It is late night, I did what I could.

Final Thoughts
This project was a crazy idea! Never think big since the start. It's better to start with some small, fun and playable game, and then you start incrementing it's gameplay. If I had time, I would restart this project as a proper walking simulator. There were too many ideas, this project tried to be many things, and ended up being some weird mix of things I thought that were cool. But even with it's flaws, bugs and unfinished things, I'm proud of it! I learned a lot with this project, and I'm ready to try again!