Like most indies, I have huge ideas. I want to make a game so impressive, so grandiose, your grandmother will renounce her faith and worship the ground that I step on. So when the #indiesvspiewdiepie game jam was announced, I was extremely excited to take part and strut my stuff. But halfway throught my 72 hour adventure, I had to scrap a majority of work that wasn’t fun to play.

My original idea for Loose Cannons was to have a lone cop traverse through courses and obstacles, using his dual-pistols and the help of slo-motion to get through a hellstorm of enemies. The first two days of my developement process was full of coding and pizza eating. After sitting in a stationary position for almost 36 hours into the jam, I came up with some levels and code that I was pretty proud of. I showed it to my roommates and had them test it out, but from their comments and criticisms, I never found that they were having any fun.

I’ve never been attached to the things that I make, and decided to throw out the levels and enemies I had before. What was left was the entire character controller, which I had worked on for the most part of the first day.

It’s difficult to have one day to rebuild your game almost from the ground up. I’m generally a level-headed person, but I could feel my blood pressure rise. However, Loose Cannons was able to turn around into the fast paced (Alpha) multi-player game that it is now.

I guess what I can say that I learned is that spending extra time initially on tightning your main mechanics is key. If all else fails, you can put those mechanics and structures into new environments that may or may not work better for you.

Loose Cannons is an incomplete work. But I’m happy with how it turned out. And I’m even planning on continuing the project to see where it goes from here.

If you haven’t played it yet, I ask you to check it out! Maybe evn throw in a vote. Cough cough.

http://jams.gamejolt.io/indiesvspewdiepie/games/loose-cannons/39975

-Adam Meredith

#indiesvspewdiepie