From January 7th to January 14th, 2024, I participated in and completed my very first Game Jam. This Jam was specifically geared towards people with less experience and thus were not ranked. However, we were tasked to focus on gameplay, creativity and innovation, theme adherence, playability and user experience, art and design, and overall fun factor. Following the theme of this jam, “Building Connections”, my seven person team (2 developers, 2 composers, 1 3D artist, 1 storywriter, and myself— a UX/UI designer) from 5 different time zones, set off to create a game from scratch within a week.
I put down a few game ideas and then on Miro we worked through some possible mechanics and concepts. Ultimately, we decided to make a game where a penguin had to deliver a rock to another, and through building bridges out of ice, he would work his way to the top and process his love by handing over his rock. This idea would match the theme by physically building connections (via bridges), and building an emotional connection as well.
I immediately started to sketch out some UI ideas and potential screen configurations. This proved to be difficult for a number of reasons. To start, while we were provided with a sample color palette, the colors did not match our game concept well, and thus I had to choose my own colors, fonts, and general styling ideas. Second, we were all working at the same time. This meant that I could not wait to see what mechanics/graphics would make the final cut before deciding on the ideal UI configuration and what to include. There were talks about adding a timed element to the game. While this did not make make it in, I included this within some of my original sketches.
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Throughout the week, we used Trello to keep track of our progress. Before this project, I had minimal Godot experience, but with the limited time, I took it upon myself to try my best and implement my designs directly into the engine. After following a few tutorials, asking for help, and trying things out, I was able to put a number of my designs within the game. This included buttons, text boxes, volume controls, on-screen controls, and more. I also designed, illustrated, and partly developed the starting, settings, pause, and credits screens. Adding all of these, though not necessary for gameplay, I felt greatly added to the game experience— making it feel more complete.
During the week, we had to real in our ambitions to be able to get the core mechanics and game loop in place before the deadline. This meant that we had to remove the competitive aspect of the game. A few obstacles were added, such as low visibility areas, a maximum number of harvestable blocks (used to cross from one area to another), and polar bears as a simple “enemy”. We felt having a “story” at this point made the most sense. Our storywriter then wrote the text for all the NPCs, providing a background to why you have to travel to the top and basic hints.
We finished and submitted our game with a few hours to spare. I was unable to implement all the UI elements I designed primarily due to a lack of Godot engine knowledge (specifically putting a in a background the the volume sliders). I designed a static box counter but ended up liking the simple, but moving, one the game template already had. I also had to adjust the text box a number to times to better display dialogue and speakers’ names after receiving everything from our storywriter.
We were worried that the game would be too boring, but a number of comments on the game’s itch.io page stated the game was cute and fun to play. While current play count isn’t as high as we would have liked it to be, overall my team and I are pretty happy with the game we produced. Click on the images below to enlarge.
Starting screen
Settings
Dialogue
HUD
Pause
Credits