This evening saw the start of the first of two Game Jams for this module. Excitement had been building all week with a lot of chatter in the student forum and on our Discord server. I was particularly intrigued as the theme would need to serve both the Indie Game Dev course and the User Experience course.
All became clear at the Big Reveal (see photo below). The theme comprised of two elements: a picture card taken from the game Dixit and a random theme generator previously used in the Berlin Mini Game Jam.
The webinar chat immediately erupted with ideas revolving around pirates, Vikings and parcel delivery. The ideas were coming so fast it was difficult keeping up with the chat system.
My initial thought was to have the player control a boat and try to catch parcels as they dropped from the sky. Not a particularly good idea if I’m honest but it was a start. There wasn’t enough of a concept here either. It was far too similar to Breakout and from memory Andre LaMothe demonstrated how a good developer could write a Breakout clone in only 4 hours .
Keen to explore a few more concepts I broke out iThoughtsX on the iPad and started working on a mind map.
Initial Concept Mindmap
By the end of the webinar I’d got 5 concepts:
- Catch falling presents
- The Aw-Sum Flyer
- Parcel delivery
- Castle escape
- Treasure island
Not all of these are flyers (sorry, couldn’t resist that!) and my initial favourites are further described below.
The Aw-Sum Flyer
The Aw-Sum Flyer combined both theme elements into a single game intended to help kids get better at mental arithmetic and times tables.
The player controls a flying boat that keeps falling from the sky. To keep it aloft they must answer a random sequence of maths questions. For each correct answer, the player gains altitude; for a wrong one it falls. If it hits the ground or an obstacle such as a tree or building, they lose a present (life). When all lives are lost the game ends.
Higher levels can be made more complex by making the questions harder and reducing the time limit to answer.
Castle Escape
This one is inspired by Escape from Colditz, and I’ve absolutely no idea how or why I thought of it. At the time I was thinking “What if the picture card was the final scene? How did we arrive here?” The idea is relatively simple and again combines both the picture card and ‘Basic Arithmetic’.
You are trapped in a castle and working against the clock you need to escape. By solving a set of maths puzzles you obtain materials you can use for your escape. To escape you need to cross the castle’s lava moat.
Time is against you and if you don’t leave before the timer expires, you lose. To temporarily borrow an idea from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Scott Adams adventure, “The Count”, it could be a vampire castle and you need to leave before the sun sets. It’s a bit of a cliche now but would fit the notion of the orange sunset shown in the card.
Treasure Island
Very similar to the previous idea, in this game the player needs to escape from a sinking island (Atlantis?) with as much loot as possible. It’s a similar idea to the 1990’s board game “Escape from Atlantis”. This could be combined with maths puzzles to build something as above.
This idea is almost identical to the one above, just in a different setting.
Conclusion
At this point in time my preference is for the Aw-Sum Flyer. My niece struggled to learn her tables when she was 8 and my wife and I used to trade answers for rewards but only if she could answer within a given time limit. For example, if she asked for a packet of crisps we’d say something like “yes, but you have to get 10 questions right, each within 3 seconds.“ By the end of the week she knew them inside out.
This particular project ‘feels’ about right in terms of work to meet the deadline. The game is relatively simple being almost certainly a platform-scrolly and there are some new aspects of Unity I’ve not touched before, such as UI design and scrolling backgrounds.
To explore the idea further I ran a 30 minute brainstorming session as the Inspiration phase of an ICEDIP session and captured these additional ideas…
Once the 30 minutes had expired I then grouped the notes into related ideas…
Tomorrow evening I plan to revisit the original theme for this game jam. I’m convinced there a better idea waiting the the aether, just waiting to be found. I’m happy to run with what I have but before I commit I want to see what the subconscious comes up with overnight.
List of Images
Figure 1. RUBINO, 2020 Theme revealed at the start of the jam
Figure 2. THORN, 2020 Mind map of initial concept ideas
Figure 3. THORN, 2020 Initial brainstorm
Figure 4. THORN, 2020 Grouped ideas
References
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
