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Game Jam Games

a collection by DancingEngie · last updated 2023-11-10 02:53:17

Developed under short deadlines for events. May be buggy or unpolished. In general, recent games = higher quality.

Visual Novel
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Added Apr 01, 2023 by DancingEngie

Made for NaNoRenO 2023. "Failed actress and frustrated army officer running around magical-realist Israel" is a concept I really wanted to write, and this was a perfect chance to try it out.

Wildflowers was made in two weekends while holding a full-time job, meaning it was written with no plan or structure. It led to unexpected moments and twists, but also emotional whiplash and a very weird ending. At the end of the day, I still very much like the cast, and it felt great to finally write these damn characters in a tight project I can actually publish.

Action
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Added Dec 16, 2022 by DancingEngie

Made for 7dfps 2022. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I had the luxury of firing an old revolver. I barely got a few shots in before we left, but for some reason it left a big impact on me.

This game is an attempt to gamify the tactility and complexity of these antique firearms by making a text parser game "for people who hate text parser games" (me included). Judging from the comments, I think it succeeded, and I had fun making and playing it.

Action
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Added Jul 17, 2022 by DancingEngie

Made for GMTK Jam 2022. It's like 9111 in the sense that it's a dumb, fun game that's all chaos and no sense. If God Wills It is an attempt to take the "roll the dice" theme as literally as possible - I mean, you play as a die that rolls around to kill board game pieces.

It doesn't have much depth and considering it's a game design jam, it's didn't score high on originality. But it does have a strong sense of (shitty) style and a parody intro that ended up being so straight-faced it became almost genuinely epic.

Action
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Added Apr 22, 2022 by DancingEngie

Created for TriJam, April 2022. I don't like jokey "clutch" jams like "1h game jam", but 3 hours of actual development seemed acceptable to me at the time (no pun intended). The jam's theme, "upgrade your weapons", immediately brought back memories of playing Engineer in TF2, which inspired the scrap-grabbing mechanic of this game.

Frustratingly it took roughly 4 hours to develop AA. Those hours were not used particularly well - I was completely out of shape when it comes to Unity2D and about half that time was spent looking up tutorials for complex systems like "top down movement". I debated whether or not to even submit it as it's rough as all hell, but the trippy vector aesthetic was too hard to resist.

Added Oct 20, 2021 by DancingEngie

Created for Scream Jam 2021. Developed in 2-3 hour bursts over the workweek with the self-imposed challenge of making a "one room" adventure game. The result is a short thriller... thing, about getting used to doing something terrible.

Considering how little content there is, the code is an absolute mess and it's all held up with sticks and gum. But overall, I think it's as long as it needs to be and it's effective if you read through everything. You might need to play it twice to get the full experience, though.

Action
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Added Jun 13, 2021 by DancingEngie

Made for Game Maker's Toolkit Jam 2021. On a whim, two friends and I decided to form a team for this jam. During brainstorming, the idea of controlling three cars at the same time immediately sprung up. I was skeptical, but after we came up with the idea of three systems the player must manage (and the ensuing chaos that follows), I was 100% in.

I don't think we managed to properly communicate that 9111 is not a game you play to win, it's a game you laugh along with. It's absolutely insane and dumb and you're set up to lose.

Also, one final fact: the game files were submitted literally 2 minutes before the deadline.

Action
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Added Jun 03, 2021 by DancingEngie

Created for So Bad It's Good Jam 2021. I missed out on many jams in 2021 due to some very demanding gigs, but the simple concept of this jam in particular meant that I could make """freeform art""" and get away with it.

The simple idea of "what if you only had one button but it does a lot of things" combined with vague memories of FTL culminated in this oddly compelling yet stressful concept that I had a blast figuring out.

Added Feb 01, 2020 by DancingEngie

Created for Global Game Jam 2020. A dungeon crawler where you must "repair" your body while escaping from an occult monster.

This game wasn't fun to make, and not because I didn't like the idea. I was sick and actually considered quitting halfway through, apologizing profusely to my teammate Nadav throughout. Plus, the game had to be rebalanced at the last minute due to some core pillars having to be cut for time, as I didn't know enough about Unreal Engine to help my developer friend.

If you have some experience with the genre, it's a tense crawler that takes a good amount of strategy to solve. Good for a couple of minutes if you can stomach the file size.

Interactive Fiction
Added Oct 28, 2018 by DancingEngie

Created for Bite-Sized Horror Jam 2018. The kinda-sorta spiritual successor to Typing...: a very short IF about launching a space shuttle. Not quite a "horror" game in the traditional sense. Designing the look and feel of the operating system was a challenge I had fun solving.

ZEUS 111 did teach me a very important lesson: don't assume your players know how to play your game even if it's cribbing off a genre with very established rules. The game didn't see a tenth of Typing...'s attention because of it, but I do like the existential horror concept fascinating.

Added Oct 13, 2017 by DancingEngie

Created for Game Maker's Toolkit Jam 2017. I'll admit it, it's probably the most unoriginal jam game ever made. "Health as ammo" is probably the most banal and cliched idea for such a jam. With Peacechange, I focused on a striking visual style and game feel, and I did succeed in doing that in my opinion, even if partially.

Added Oct 13, 2017 by DancingEngie

Created for Global Game Jam 2017. Very much riding off the look of Ultra ADHD, it's an incredibly buggy and artistically in-cohesive stealth-action game where you blow people up with hand waves. And THIS was the game that got somehow covered by Markiplier. Murphy's Law, folks.

While I was in denial of WAVIOLENCE for a long while after its release, it was hilarious to develop, and I now see it essentially as an irreverent game you play to laugh along with (or laugh AT).

And yes, I was tipsy when I made it, why do you ask?

Interactive Fiction
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Added Oct 13, 2017 by DancingEngie

Created for Bite-Sized Horror Jam 2015. Interactive Fiction set in an faux-IRC chatroom. Unintentionally became my most popular game to this day, probably due to a WebGL bug that made the ending hit home for many folks.

It's also a bit of a ripoff of annie96 is typing that I'm kinda ashamed of in hindsight because I made this game to learn Unity and didn't expect it to blow up but you didn't hear me say that