McGameJam2023 Retrospection Vincent St-Pierre January 2023 

1. Context

 Earlier in January 2023, I participated in the McGameJam2023 event that took place in McGill University from Friday January 6th to Sunday January 8th. Together with two members (”Torkarra” and ”Junferno”), I participated in the creation of a game following a specific theme under a time limit of 48 hours. The theme was decided by the organizers and given right before the start of the timer. For this year, the organizers chose the theme ”Deserted”, meaning anything relating to desolation, abandon, isolation, etc. We used Unity to make the game. We separated the work according to our strengths and experience. I mainly worked on CSharp scripts and the behaviour of objects in Unity. This was my first Game Jam, and I went with what I thought I would be the most comfortable with.

 We came up with ”Lusk”, a game where the player controls a snail in a an abandoned weathered house. The game is in 3D, and the snail can move along walls, objects; anything with a rigid body. The goal is to explore the house and to climb to the roof to trigger the ending. Originally, there was also a puzzle aspect to the game we wanted to implement. I will talk about it more later on since it was an important part of our decision making. While the snail moves around, the time of day, and even, at an interval, seasons, will change. This was done to show in an exaggerated manner how slow the snail is, and also to give an interesting aspect to the game where the environment can change. Finally, the are multiple game objects that the snail can interact with scattered around the house, showing traces of ancient owners, and how nature is taking over. 

2. My Experience

 I had a good time at the event. Working in a team was both exciting and motivating. The time limit, although stressful, also helped adding extra motivation and productivity. It was my first time doing a 48-hour, mostly non-stop programming project. Starting the project, we had good synergy that allowed us to find quickly a general idea of how our game would work and look. We quickly started doing our individual parts. I started working on a script for the snail’s movement. It was a challenge because the snail would have to move on any surface, including diagonal and spherical ones. Torkarra started with the game design and the creation of scenes on Unity. Meanwhile, Junferno worked on Blender to model the snail and the different objects we would find in the house. He also did the game audio after.  Getting the snail to move correctly and smoothly took a while to do. I made a prototype script that worked fairly well, but had ”robotic” and ”buggy” movement along surfaces. My teammate Junferno helped me fix the script for a smoother rotation. Next I worked on managing seasons (with the GameManager), and game object behavior. Using a testing scene in Unity, I programmed objects that could be interacted with. In our game scene, I also set empty objects that will handle how the environment changes with seasons, using scripts and serialized fields. My teammates did a great job setting up the visuals, audio, and the level we would play on. It was a great learning experience. It had its lot of struggles, especially with the wall movement part, but there was no better way of getting meaningful game developing experience than taking my chance at a game jam. Yes, the competitive aspect of the event helped me and my teammates do our best to make a wonderful game. But for me, it was also the excitement of learning the ways of the industry (team effort), and getting some practice in for future projects.

 3. Possible Improvements

 It is always constructive to reflect on your past work for possible improvements. Of course, I will be avoiding endless what-ifs about the subject of the game, since what is done is done. Let us rather look at what could be improved in other parts of the game such as gameplay and game design. First, I can say that we aimed for something bigger than we should have. The scope, especially under a time limit, is a very important thing. A simpler, but complete game is better than a large incomplete one. We originally aimed for an exploration/puzzle game. The snail would have to interact with the change of seasons to find its way to the top of the roof. The activation of one game object would allow the activation of an other and so on. Doing both exploration and puzzles was a big goal. Looking back, it would have been better to focus on one of the two, probably the puzzle aspect. Since only one of us had experience in modeling, enhancing the design of the house to allow for more exploration would have been difficult. However, we could have made the game in 2D to implement more easily the puzzles. A 3-person 3D game was ambitious, and 2D would have given us more time to complete and polish the game. Our final product was not as complete and polished as we would have wanted, which left the goal of the game rather ambiguous for the judges. Indeed, having a clear goal is good for the player because going in circles without knowing what you are doing is probably one of the biggest turnoffs in gaming. With the time gained by simplifying the game, we could have added more context using an opening sequence like many other games from the game jam. This could have helped defining how exactly the ”Deserted” theme comes into play, which was also ambiguous to some of the judges until we explained how. Giving a reason for the player to care from the start is essential to grab their attention. This is why game openings and introductions are so important in the development of a game. A well introduced game (mechanics and goal) is much more engaging, something that, I am sure, all video game companies are aiming for. All this is to say that creating a ”minimal product” that you can then expand upon is truly the strategy to adopt when developing a game.