Labyrinth of the cerebellum post mortem

Introduction:
About a 15 days before the jam started I received the email from Game Jolt about the Dreamhack Atlanta jam, I decided to participate and started thinking of game around the theme that I assumed it would be based on the art for the Jam page. 11 PM Oct 25 my time the theme was announced, Single-Player Battle Royal, To say that threw me for a loop would be a understatement. Not only did the theme completely break what I was thinking of but the principle of what single player battle royal meant from a game play standpoint was… weird. I feel like what makes a battle royal game like fortnite & pubg is the player VS player game play, allowing each player a chance to win based almost completely on skill, I do not see how making a game like this where you battle AI works from a game play standpoint, either you make the AI overpowered to combat the inherent ability of a human player, or you allow the player to just mow through AI, neither of which made sense to me. regardless of whether the idea for a single player battle royal makes sense, I could not see it in a way I was happy with. I say all that not in criticism of Game Jolt for the theme but more just my process of thought, I actually like how unpredictable and odd the theme was in my opinion, it required a lot more thought about how to make a game that fit the theme, and allowed for some more clever interpretations of the meaning.

Beginning:
I contacted my friend and told him what the theme was, after talking about it for a little bit we decided to figure it out tomorrow, On the night of the 26th we finally figured out a game, something that used the idea of a battle royal while not being the standard battle royal game. The idea being a puzzle game that was more about surviving against the world longer than you competitors than about directly fighting them. I knew from experience of the DreamHack Austin jam I did earlier this year that It was really important to figure out the scale of game based on the length of the jam, I wanted to try and make a game that was completed, in some sense and not something that just felt like a concept.

What I learned:
Over the 8-9 days I was able to work I learned a lot, This being one of the most completed game project I have every done meant that I needed to work on every aspect, a lot of the projects I have made before have been partially incomplete, no animations, basic models, no sound, ect.
My knowledge is mostly in programming, That is what I know the most about and is what I want to do, But because I don’t know anyone who can do the other parts of making a game like sound, modeling, animations, levels, visuals, etc. I end up needing to do everything, so I have knowledge in some stuff like modeling but designing a character and animating it was something I hadn’t really done before, so I learned a lot more about that. I also learned more about sound design, Though I still have more to learn in that. More about materials, Modeling levels, lighting. If I started the project over again I could probably make the whole thing better in half the time, but that is why I like making a bunch of new projects and trying new programming languages and engines.

What went wrong:
So looking back at the project there were several things that took longer or caused problems, these things I need to work with more and learn more about so next time I don’t run into these problems again.

• Lighting, I ran into a lot of problems trying to get lighting to look ok, part of the problems had to do with a lack of knowledge of how to properly light scenes in Unreal, In the end I used a trick for the shadow of the character, which was sub-par but after having wasted a day trying to figure it out I decided it would work for this project.

• Character modeling and animation, I have modeled very basic characters before, and had some experience with rigging, but modeling a more complex character as the one in the game I had never accomplished. Modeling, UV, Texturing, Rigging, & Animating took over 2 days, Partially because I ended up restarting on the second day because of a combinations of problems I had with the first character.

• Puzzle & World design, because of how long the above took It really pushed off my time for building puzzles until the last two days, I ended up getting 4 levels done, but without more time I wasn’t able to properly play test them for difficulty.

What went right:
I feel like the general idea for what I wanted the game to be like came through, There are problems and the levels are in my opinion a bit underwhelming, but using the core concept I feel like I could take the idea much further and make a more full fledged game. Though I think i’ll let this project lie.

Closing statement:
In the end I think the project was mostly a success, Though I ran into some problems I overcame most of them, and for the time allowed I’m pretty happy with it. I’m excited for my next Jam where I can use my new knowledge and experience to build something even better! Thanks for reading!

Cole B.