Day 1: Humble Beginnings

I'm a bit late to the party: Joining a game jam was, despite my current lack of time, a spontaneous decision. 5 days of the game jam had already passed, but this still leaves over a week for me to finish a small project. And I'm hyped!

The Chill Jam proposes 4 themes:

• uʍop-ǝpısdn
• in the dark
• winter
• robot takeover

I'd say my idea is incorporating them all: Set in winter, robots turn the world upside-down and the player has to traverse a pitch-black cave to save it. While I'm not covering the optional restrictions 1-bit and one button, I'd say I have good chances for same hue and platformer without jumping. With all these suggestions it immediately seemed clear to me to go for a puzzle platformer that plays with gravity or world inversion instead of jumping, so I'm hoping that not a lot of people are taking the same approach.

Given that I don't exactly have a whole lot of experience in game development, I'd say that I made good progress on the first day. My 2.5D platformer with minimalistic, chilly aesthetics reminds me a little bit of VVVVVV and Limbo, and most of the core elements are implemented: The player character can move in two dimensions, invert gravity, walk on the ceiling, is fully animated, and triggers Zelda/Metroid-like room transitions when reaching the next part of the cave. It's not much, but I'm proud of it. I also really like the game description I came up with - is it obvious that I recently watched Tenet?

Next stop: Level design. Some actual rooms with obstacles to bypass, rigid bodies the player can manipulate, and simple puzzles. It's honestly not really my strength, so I hope time will suffice for further plans: I want to give a shot at short cutscenes and even a small boss fight. I also have a nice ending up my sleeve which I'm not going to spoil. Music and sound design is something I can't force myself to at arbitrary times but I know will succeed.

At this point I would also like to give credits to Houssine Mehnik for developing the Custom Gravity Plugin for Unreal Engine 4 which works perfectly fine in UE5.1 as well. The main character is based on the Stylized Modular Character by Mad Mike 3D, given away for free by Epic Games in February 2021. Thanks!

On to the next stage. I do hope I will be able to work actively on the game and publish a small devlog at least every other day. Until next time!