Travel across the US and take silly photos in Picture Perfect, our cozy little puzzle game for GMTK Jam 2024.

The prompt for this year’s jam was “Built to Scale”, and we decided we really wanted to make a game that played with forced perspective. We brainstormed a few different ideas, including one where you play as an artist using your thumb to gauge the difference in size between distant objects and the drawings on your canvas. Eventually, we found that the most engaging version of the concept was one where you use the famous “dolly zoom” effect (move backward while zooming in) to line up a character with some distant landmark.

We spent a good amount of time choosing our landmarks and levels, and found a flow that allowed us to slowly introduce one mechanic at a time. One of our biggest priorities this year was a smooth learning curve and a very clear tutorial flow. Game Jams in particular feature a ton of high concept ideas, and with so many games to play, you usually only have 30-60 seconds to hook new players. Games with complicated systems and no tutorial are often frustrating to play, and a player with hundreds of other options isn’t going to stick with a confusing game for more than a minute or two.

We kept the scope small (only 8 levels) so that we could focus on delivering the most polished experience possible. With 4 days this year, we were able to add a ton of QOL features that we would normally have to skip: main menu with parallax, a hint system, post-processing, etc.

We’re so proud of what we accomplished for this jam, and we hope this game is as fun for you to play as it was for us to make!

Incredulous Interactive (Ryan & Josh)