So the PirateJam ended like a week ago(as of time of writing this); then why is this thing getting updated until now?
Well mainly because I was scared to death of touching the submitted prototype. I tested it and everything was correct so I thought, “better to leave it at that so it won’t break in any way”.

Thankfully… It didn’t break.

So I can say that my first gamejam* was a complete success… up to personal goals at least…

As for the Jam’s actual goals? Well…

*(It’s my second “attempt” at a Jam but my first actual working submission) .

Jams usually have a Theme and this one was no exception.

“Spreading” was the agreed theme. I started working right after the announcement and came up with a few ideas but… nothing useful and time was still running. In the end I settled with something that was… kinda close but… not really…

“Consumes or expands” was what I decided to go with. Not exactly “spreading” but well, time had the highest priority so, yeah.

It was no surprise that it was reflected in the judge’s feedback; (the thing that I was looking for the most from all of this).

But there is one other little thing more relevant:

All right now we’re talking!

Ah Yes, Hidden Mechanics... Right?

Indeed the boss takes forever to defeat… if you don’t weaken it…

I saw this same feedback from other people a couple of times and to be fair, they’re correct.

Aside from the unpolished... “everything”; there were a few things I had to cut out, some from the start and some others a few hours before the deadline.

One mechanic that did make it was a shield for enemies/boss, but unfortunately, I couldn’t show how it works as clear as I wanted.

Without getting too much into detail (cuz that will be for another post), the consume or expand mechanic implemented allows the player to “make the enemies stronger, they are harder to defeat but now they yield more rewards”.

The thing is that while the boss uses this mechanic it is not as intuitive:

The color represents enemy levels and red is the maximum level, which makes the boss reduce all damage taken to 1; hence, “it would take forever to defeat”.

You can still brute force your way though; but the ideal solution would be to lower its level and yes, there is a way to do that.