The gm(48): One Health was a 48 hour jam where developers needed to make a game using Game Maker. The theme of this jam was “One Health”. There were many games entered in this jam, I recorded all of them in my video compilation series. Below are some of my favorites, in a random order.

Bullet Bait is a bullet hell where you are challenged to collect some of the bullets coming towards you for points. You and your (AI) friend are playing a dangerous game of catch the bullet. You must catch the yellow bullets but avoid the blue bullets coming from your friend. If you hit a blue bullet, you will be injured, and not want to continue. On the other hand, you must shoot at specific groupings of blue bullets yourself, but also avoid your friends bullets, to earn more points. If you are the one to shoot your friend, the game will also be over. These two friends are quite fun to listen to when it comes to interacting - they tell each other not to be too aggressive and it really does dent the friendship if you shoot each other! Good luck collecting bullets and avoiding breaking your friendship.

Juan Salud Robot Training Facility is a challenging game about combining ingredients to make health items for a company. You are a robot whose only goal is to create goods for humans! You will receive recipes for these goods, then need to gather 2 ingredients per recipe to create whatever is being ordered. Once the ingredients are added to the machine, the machine will spit out what you have made. You must then take that object to the out box. After a few orders are filled, a glados-esque robot that is here to guide you, informs you that the population would like to see how you work in a war environment. Soon, you will find there are lasers appearing, rockets chasing you, and tons of chaos! You will need to keep up with the orders, listen to your guide robot, and try not to die!

BOMBS AWAY!! is a short but charming platformer where you need to explore your bomb character to remove blocks or change the environment! You are an adorable bomb that can interact with heated squares or lava to explode. Exploding is key to moving on, you must explode by specific blocks to go to new areas or trigger blocks with a ! to change the environment. Soon, checkpoints will start appearing throughout the level. These will allow you to respawn at that specific point when you die. This game is pretty short, but I love the animation for the bomb and the direction this game is heading towards! There is definitely room for this concept to continue!

Max Wax! is another short game that I just found interesting. In this game, you play a lit candle. You can use your fire to destroy cloud-based enemies. There are beautiful - abet glitchy - text boxes that appear on the screen to guide you and explain things to you. Some of the enemies towards the end of the game are fart based and explode. The candle animation is super nice and the character. The hilariousness of the text boxes is what really got the game on my favorites list. The developer clearly was proud of their text boxes, even though they are not perfect. Instead, they tell you of what could have been in the game, different aspects of the game, and just keep you busy. I enjoyed reading them (and trying to stay in a place in the level where I could read them!)

Jack Strong is a very challenging but unique shooter where you can use the souls of the dead to revive yourself! You only have one life, yet you are in a building full of gun wielding enemies. You must fight back! You are able to pick up guns dropped by dead enemies to use. This building is fill of long hallways with doors. When doors are not open, the people on the other side do not know what is going on behind the door. Therefore, they will not be prepared for your attack. Once you die, you go into a limbo between life and death, complete with the grim reaper. If you have killed an enemy, their soul floats here. You can reap their soul to become alive again and continue fighting. If you are super lucky, the grim reaper might even allow you to reap him, so you can come back once again. You are quite outnumbered, but you only need to kill one person before you die to continue your quest!

気違いさん の ファイナル エクザーム is a tense typing game that has you trying to type for your life. Your teacher who has turned into a psychotic game show host is giving you your final test. You have already made the mistake of answering incorrectly in the past, so you are down to your last life. All that is left is for you to quickly type out the words that appear on the screen relating to different subjects. If you make a mistake, you may get shot. At first, there is only one bullet spinning around in the barrel of the gun. If you make a mistake and the arrow points to a bullet, you will be shot. If you do not type the word fast enough, you will also be shot. As you type through these words, your teacher will switch subjects and add another bullet to the gun’s barrel. This game is very well made, quite challenging after a few rounds, and really gives you a tense feeling when playing!

Lovers is a challenging game to master, but has a very unique concept and a nice graphic style. You play a pair of lovers who are trapped in a dungeon. One of the lovers holds a heart - this is the one that you control. You are able to pass the heart between the lovers if the path is clear and there are no enemies or environmental walls in the way. If you are holding the heart, you cannot run into an enemy or you and your love will die. The character that is not holding the heart will be spouting black ooze to kill the enemies. These enemies will not go near this character, so you need to switch at times when there are enemies around you. This ooz can also kill you, so you must stay alive until all of the enemies die. You will then move onto the next level and be forced to pick one handicap and one improvement to the lovers. This game does have glitches when using a keyboard (though you can work around it) so I would suggest using a controller!

Heartman is a cute platformer where you are the one health you can give to people! You have one health that you are able to give to different fallen heros so that you can make it to the hearth portal. Some of these levels have heroes who have not fallen and you must avoid. These heros do destroy anything in their path - including you. You can give your heart to a fallen rino, swordsman, and a man-eating flower. Sometimes you will have the opportunity to gain more hearts to give away - especially when another enemy is killed by something you brought to life. You will need to choose wisely who your heart is given too, as you will need that character to keep you safe, unblock areas, and get you to the end. If you choose the wrong character, you risk death! This game is very cute, short, and fun to play.

#BulletBait #JuanSaludRobotTrainingFacility #BOMBSAWAY #MaxWax #JackStrong #気違いさんのファイナルエクザーム #Lovers #Heartman