The curse and the blessing of this LD's theme (Making of our game - kinda).

First of all I think the theme was very generic. What I mean by that is almost every single game even triple AAA fills in this theme. Start with nothing is so vague, anything can work. RPG where you are Lv0 hero with leaky pants and a stick in your hand, in a strategy game where you have no armies nor resources, in metroidvania (which we decided to make for this LD ) you start with zero skills and no abilities at all, in FPS when you get more and more powerful weapons, survival games where you gather resources, racing games when you start with one crappy car, I think you get the point I'm trying to present.

We usually try to use the theme in the most creative way possible, but I'm not gonna lie, this time me and my partner, we didn't like the theme even one bit. So after quick brainstorming session we decided to do just do a regular game this time, in a genre we both love. We may have been over ambitious with what we aimed to achieve, but at the same time I think this is the best game we ever have done so far.

If you haven't played our game yet there will be spoilers below, so you read on your own risk from now on ;).

"METROIDVANIA, and how it starts with a concept."

When last LD have ended I really regretted my decision on cutting of some of the mechanics my main protagonist was supposed to have. Me and my friends, we ended up implementing maybe half of all the functionality we had intended for the PC when we realized we won't have enough time to create the rest of the game. So on Monday morning (UK time) we started cutting off content, and thx to that we barely manage to make it in time to submit our game. What we ended up with was half baked game, that could've been really cool but wasn't finished enough to serve even as a proof of concept. Many mechanics were missing, sprites were ugly and rushed, with one short level. So you think we would learn on our own mistakes right, we would've draw conclusions. Well let me show you something.

This is our beautiful concept art, from the brainstorming session. We have BoBo our main protagonist, we have all 5 upgrades listed on the left, some map and environmental hazards ideas on the right. So we not only doubled the amount of the mechanics compared to the previous game, but we were one person short! Our team went down from 3 to just 2. Our friend had to attend wedding and couldn't join us. What could've go wrong right?

This was the first GIF and design of the BoBo I've send to my programmer to hear his opinion out. I got greenlighted and proceeded to animate him. It took me over one day with him. I guess it didn't help that mid the process I got stroked by the genius idea, and decided that propeller on top of BoBo's head will be more interesting than just boring rocket shoes/jet pack. So I got excited and went ahead with my idea, and when I finished I reached my programmer again, guess what was the first thing he worked on and finished. That's right, rocket boots. Fully functional with propelling, fuel system and particle effect. We ended up using none of that, I'm a bad friend I know. But i felt it would be the best proof of going from nothing to something. Let me explain, but first check this out, ain't that ball cute?

When you start our game you play as a little limbless ball, that can only roll on it's sides. You are in a gloomy, dim, empty environment. As you progress through the game you unlock more limbs, you bring back the power to the place, and get new means to pass through the obstacles. When you finally get the final upgrade, the propeller, we cut you loose and let you go freely to do what you want. You can continue the game, you can go back and explore the entire map. I thought having this freedom would contrast really nicely with how little to almost nothing you had at the beginning. We even emphasized that feeling with the game ending but I won't spoil it here.

Complete(I think) sprite sheet of BoBo. Some of these frames were never used in the game, even though they are implemented. Why? Because in the end I was forced to cut the content. But this time to make it on time I decided to forsake our level. My tile set was very limited, and I only got to building our environment and level 4 hours before the end of the jam. I had so many doubts going through my head when I started making it. I was angsty and angry that I spend all that time animating main character and it will go to waste. I wanted to quit jam, I basically started lacking motivation to push forward. I had to finish the entire map for Metroidvania game in around 2 hours, because my friend had to hook up and connect together all the mechanics, make levers I placed functional, magnets to move around, conveyor belt platforms to push you and so on. I manage to finish the map I designed in 2 and a half hours. Half an hour of delay, and believe me I cut out like 30% of the level I had on paper.

If you played our game this should look familiar. That's my mini map I've made for myself as a guide before I started building the level. But you can see that almost all of the middle section is gone and what we have in the game is very simplify straight forward corridor. Some other sections in the game also got simplified, and shortened. Even the last hall, room, is way different.

It's 9 45 PM on my clock. Only and hour and few minutes left. My friends starts implementing his stuff. I think this is the best moment to tell you guys how lucky I am to have such talented, brilliant, and sharp focused friend. I may have witnessed a miracle. He finished his stuff in less then half an hour, and kept going programming some other stuff, implementing new features till the same end. 15 minutes before jam ended we didn't even had properly working sound. No music, no sound effects. nothing. I have no clue what he did and how he did it, but I think in the last hour of the jam he managed to code and implement at least 4 final features, scripted ending cutscene, hooked up sound effects to everything, scripted dynamic music and bringing on back power, and creating a tutorial for the players. He is an MVP of that project. He saved us both, and I am grateful to him for that. He also pushed me to continue working on a torch mechanic, when I was eager to drop it, because it seemed like such lame mechanic. Also thanks to him it ended up being my favorite one. Once again we made it, even though he had to drag me on his shoulder for the last hours of the jam.

In the end I'm really proud of what we achieved. BoBoBot I think is a pretty good game with a lot packed in it, specially for less than 3 days of development life cycle. And I think it wouldn't be possible if not for that theme. You see, even though I hated it at start it grew on me with time. Because we couldn't figure out anything unique and fun we could do with it, we decided to take more generic approach, but pour our hearts and minds in doing so. I can say one thing, from now on I will not judge the theme before the jam ends.

PS. I love reading and watching making offs, and listen to other people stories abot their experience with game dev, so I decided to share this time mine. I would really love to hear about your experience, so go ahead and share it in the comments. No matter if you think it was boring or not, I love to read it all. Peace.