Mini Jame Gam #8 Shrink 'n' Stretch.

Day -1 (two days before jam start):

I decided it would be a good idea to learn Unity in just 2 days.

I was right! Unity was super easy to pick up, actually! My previous experiences with Game Engines/programming were Wario Ware DIY (my first "microgame" engine), Scratch, and Python. After making a small test in Unity, I felt confident for any theme in the game jam.

Day 0: (planning)

Since there were only 3 themes available for voting, I decided to brainstorm some ideas for them before the jam even started. My idea for Decay was a game where you would be in a forest that was decaying. Faster you got through, the harder it was, but also the better ending you would get. I could not really come up with an idea for Dream though... (glad it was not picked!) My idea for Magic was a game where you are a wizard who knows size changing spells and can use them to navigate a maze. I thought it was clever, because the shrink spell both can be used for puzzles, and shrink enemies out of existence.

Day 1:

Theme was announced as magic! I was at school at the time, so I wouldn't be able to start until 14:30, but when I did, it went... a bit slow, but it was steady. I started off with some basic movement using GetAxisRaw (works on both keyboard and controller). After I got some basic movement, I added the shrink spell and tested out on some boxes. After some funny shenanigans of being able to shrink ANYTHING(like the level blocks themselves), I fiddled around with tags until it all worked. Got the first section of the level designed as well.

Day 2:

This day was quite a busy one. I spent this day designing the level, designing the SFX, composing the music,  modeling and scripting; going between task whenever I felt burnt out. Unfortunalty, I made the level too big. The last section is basically just a door that you need the stretch bolt and key to unlock. No real challenge because I wanted to finish the game today.

Time: 00:30

Technically now day 3. I started to compile my game for HTML5,  but it just would NOT work! (cue montage of my long search history of html5 build errors with chaotic music) I tried so much, my heartrate was rising like a rocket! So many issues!!!!! I ended up crashing at around 05:30, against my will. I was just too tired to stay up.

Day 3:

I wake up around 12:30, and decide to give another crack at building the HTML5 version. After tons more struggling and being cranky to my family because of this, I got a build working! Only issue was it crashed whenever you died. For some reason, setting the player's scale to 0 crashes the HTML 5 build, but not the editor. If you are wondering why the player is not fully shrinked in the death animation, it is because I applied a quick and lazy fix of just capping the scale to 0.1. After uploading the game, I finally got to publish it and write this devlog! Hooray! I do think my game is a bit slow paced, but hey, my brother had no issues with the game in playtesting, so it should be reasonable enough to beat.