GGJ - A Platforming Postmortem

This weekend was the Global Game Jam, where gamedevs and game enthusiasts (me) craft games within 48 hours. I entered my first game jam excited to make games that I'd love playing. I knew there was a steep learning curve for me - I had never used Unity and also never programmed in C#. Luckily, it wasn't hard to pick up even in the tight time constraints, and I prepared beforehand.

So what did my team make? We created a simple geometric 2D platforming game using the Unity2D engine. You - a triangle - must fling yourself across shape themed terrain and find a home - whether it be in a square, a pentagon, or in another cluster of triangles. There's also the mechanic of 'changing yourself' to fit in with different shapes. As you change, you also exchange abilities (jump height, wall jump, speed).

Game name: Full Circle

Github repo: https://github.com/angelamuliu/squaretown

GGJ Link: http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/full-circle

That's what came out - but what did I do? Although I could have worked on the UI or art easily, I wanted to challenge myself. I was one of two programmers on the project. Fortunately for me, C# is similar to Java so I had no issues writing in it. The biggest challenge was working in the framework of Unity, and of course others issues like how should we move the player? Should we use physics or allow greater control by building it from the ground up (we did a mix of the two)? Other programming challenges I solved was ground checking for the triangle, state switching and activating objects, creating crumbling platforms, and well...there were just a plethora of scripts that had to be done.

Using a triangle as the player led to fun challenges and insane jump spins!

What were the biggest challenges? I suppose learning Unity while furiously trying to also make progress was one, but I find myself in that situation a lot (learning on the fly) so actually, it was kind of fun and very rewarding. I took charge with source control (Git) since my teammates were less experienced in the area, and found myself fix the ever common issue of 'someone overwrote my change what do I do please help' situations that came up. 

But by far, the biggest challenge was team coordination. My teammates were awesome and talented people, and great to talk with outside the context of a game creating marathon. But there was quite a bit of friction when it came down to making tough decisions and doing work. Sometimes one person wouldn't agree no matter what, so we had to adapt. This occasionally involved scrapping a lot of good work to get a person on board...which in turn, turned off other teammates. I had to make a lot of creative sacrifices for the sake of bringing the team together, which is okay. But next time I'd like to make something that goes beyond conventional gaming practices - this was a game jam after all!

But overall, I believe it was a great experience. I feel more confident working with Unity, C#, Git, and more after just two days working with said tools. And I learned a lot about working in teams. Now that I've got the basics down, I can make something really special in my own time.