Posts

Someone had to do it... 5

Ztuu • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam entry  Street Bots

The 5th Kajam is over, the long awaited results are in, and sadly I must graciously accept the honour of last place. It may not be your first impression to think of it as an honour, but just as every cloud has a silver lining even last place is itself a prize dependant on how you look at it.
By coming in last I therefore made the most mistakes, and by making the most mistakes I then have the most to learn and gain from taking part in this Kajam. I'm going to attempt to reflect on my own submission and work out what I could have done better. If you have any further constructive feedback I'd love to hear it.

I would like to quickly take this opportunity to thank every single person who played, rated and provided feedback on Street Bots. I appreciate every one of you.

Issue 1 - Inspiration: I chose to make a retro game inspired by Pokémon, a high standard to set the bar by. I did so because I love Pokémon and I've never made an adventure rpg so I wanted to challenge myself. An important step I missed was to look at what gave Pokémon its spark, why people loved the games and what drew them in. I think a big part of Pokémon is the depth of the world; the spreading map that you gradually explore, the chance to encounter new creatues in each place, growing your team and forming an attachment to them over time as they help you overcome various challenges. I dont think a lot of these features translate well to a smaller, shorter game which is of course what I would be making when taking part in a timed event (and starting 3 weeks late!).

Issue 2 - Flare (or lack thereof): Not being an artist this is probably something I am often guilty of. A game doesnt have to be flashy to be good but the lifeless, unanimated battles of Street Bots certainly didnt add to the immersion. The battles lacked both SFX and animation and I think this detracted from the "fall in love factor" which can draw people into games. Another example would be the player movement. I struggled at first to get the movement to feel how I wanted and decided to opt for the "good enough" approach and move on. This was a mistake because movement was such a huge part of the game. The first thing you do is move, the majority of time playing the game is probably spent moving around. I tested the game many many times and got used to the clunky movement, however to someone just downloading and trying the game the awkwardness would detract heavily from the rest of the experience.

Issue 3 - Scope: The game was just too much for me to handle in only just over a week. Add in that I got suddenly sick and didn't do any dev for 2 or 3 days and there's just not enough time. If I'd had the time I would've added a lot more to some of the existing mechanics; multiple bot battles using teams, some sort of effectiveness system in battles,  a mechanic similar to wild Pokémon for training your bots and full keyboard controls! No more cheap UI and mouse elements. Some of these features could've added more variety and life to the game. In it's current state it feels linear and stale.

Despite the bad things I've said about it I'm very proud of Street Bots. I love the game and learned a lot from creating it.
If you've actually read this entire post then thank you for reading my internal monologue brain dump. I hope you too can learn something from it.
Another huge thanks to everyone who played Street Bots, everyone who took part in Kajam 5 and the fantastic organisers of Alakajam. I look forward to the next one!

User-created levels 1

dollarone • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam entry  Wildfire

Wildfire is a game that you probably didn't play for the 5th Kajam, mainly because I completely failed to get it done in time.

The main reason for that was that I was busy working on a killer feature that I wanted to have available before people played (and forgot about) the game.

The new feature I've added to the game is the ability to create levels. This is pretty cool (IMHO) because it's adding "cloud saves" to a PICO-8 game. The way it's done is by exploiting the GPIO flags that were added to PICO-8 presumably to be able to control simple lights on your Raspberry Pi or similar. Since the data needed to store a level is pretty light, I save it in these GPIO controls, which can then be read by the HTML5 app serving the PICO-8 cart. The data is then stored on my own server via a REST interface.

This means that any level you create is available to play for all players via the "challenges" list! I can't wait to see what kind of crazy challenges will appear!

Have a play here: Wildfire

Finally made my Kajam entry! 0

Wan • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam entry  prince.exe

My plans for August were to make a game for Ludum Dare 42 that could also fit this month's Kajam. When the LD came up with the theme "Running out of space", I quickly got the idea of a terminal game where the goal was to free space. I also felt slightly lazy at that time, and not too excited by the idea of writing a fake file system with commands for it, for some reason. When @Aurel300 offered me to join his LD entry as a composer, I was quite quick to accept, and immediately trashed my game idea x)

Fast forward to this morning - after a few days, the scrapped idea had time to grow on me a bit, and I felt I could still explore it for the Kajam. Making working terminal commands was more fun and less work than I expected! After 2 or 3 hours I could eventually add the game contents, and take some time to polish various corner cases (I was sure some players would try obscure things to see what they would do, so I didn't want to disappoint :P)

The end result took about 4 hours to make, it is short but hopefully fun. Let me know what you think!

I'm in! 2

mit-mit • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam 

I've been pottering on an entry over the last two weeks, wasn't sure if I would finish it, but I think I will! A short adventure game in a row boat …

Pico platformer 4

automatonvx • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam 

pixel art platformer in pico-8 hopefully that ticks enough retro boxes

So far going pretty ok for a first time in pico-8, and its easy to export gifs too :D

Decided to jump in at the last minute! 2

Ztuu • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam 

They do say better late than never!

I wasn't planning on entering this Kajam but I've had a sudden change of heart and an idea.
Hopefully I can get something together in time that's decent enough to get people's interest.

All I have so far is a simple character but it's good to get the ball rolling.

Good luck to everyone else taking part and especially to those latecomers in the same situation as me!

I'm Joining! 0

Jaheira04 • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam 

I love retro games, so I'm totally joining.

I'm going to make a text adventure. I might add some RPG elements too, who knows. Hopefully I can get it done by the 31st.

Participating.... Kind of 0

Banana • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam 

With my holiday coinciding with Kajam 5, And the theme matching perfectly with what i would love to make. i wish that i owned a laptop. So i find myself writing a text adventure on my phone and with a story idea and a plan to send it to my self once i get home i have all the parts of my entry setout. I just need to write a convincing story and make a large branching path story which can be a winner.

Good luck to all other entrants in the competition, i wish you all good luck.

I am IN 4

dollarone • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam 

August is pretty hectic for gamejams! I want to Kajam, I want to do js13k again, there's LD and there's LowRezJam and A Game By Its Cover.

There are probably even more, but wow, that's a lot. I don't need to do all of them, but then I had an idea: maybe I can combine some of them? Especially with this theme, I should be able to join the Kajam and the LowRezJam! Maybe I can even find a cover for the name?

With this in mind, I started on an idea for my belated entry to yesterday's onehourgamejam. I went with the LowRezJam's resolution requirement, and used PICO-8 for that retro-feel.

In a couple of hours I have a prototype, which I think I will extend and submit for the Kajam and LowRezJam! It's pretty basic right now, but you can play it and win or just set things on fire: Wildfire

The idea is to extinguish fires with whatever tools you have at hand. I think if I make it turn-based it can become a nice little puzzler :)

Hey there, I'm late but here :D 3

Call_in • 5 years ago on 5th Kajam 

Hey everyone, I've some time to spare lately so let's go with this kajam. I just have a question first: Can I use an entry that i'm developing for the LOWREZ JAM ? That's an oppurtunity for me to continue working on my LOWREZ JAM entry and I think that could fit the theme nicely with a bit of sup work. I've started the dev today so I don't have any overtime. I just want to be sure that I can enter. Good luck everyone and have fun !