Posted December 21, 2025 by JKaos0725
Hello! I am the character designer and co-developer for Flightless!
I joined up with 2 other 3d artist and programmers and a sfx and music designer to make this game!
Here is what I learned from my time making this game.
What worked:
Game design document - We made a plan and stuck to it. We changed thinfs along the way, but this helped put all pur minds to the same place.
Delegating tasks helped. One person working on different parts greatly decreased the load for others. We knew different parts of what we have made in the past, so we allowed each other to work on what we know best. I had no idea on 3d character controllers, so I went to focus on making characters and animations.
Blender files in project - Helped quickly make prototypes and see what did and did not work
Color atlas - Deciding on an atlas early on helped make our colors look simialr. This kept things cohesive fpr assets. Even with our own touches for how models look
Pixel art screen - The lower level of details focused on making things visible. A small bad woukd not be seen, so details were focused on making things readable.
Github - Helped a ton making sure all our assets were secure and collective for our games
What didn't work:
Github - Was a bit of a struggle for some of pur development. Trees were a bit too much for the scale, and there was many problems with old Github accounts.
What to do next - After most things were done, the vision on the game was not as strong. The strong start weakened as we did not have a direction to go next. This struggled as we were looking for directions for making levels
Communication for making what - I made characters, but I took the fun away from another one of the developers who wanted to make them. It turned into a quick moment to just move on, and it is a learning experience on asking what people want to do. Next project, he gets to make characters!
This was a fun project overall. Spending time making games on my own helped design systems and modular design. I was making a vampire survivors game, so I was using what I learned there to add new systems to this one. The acorn system is one with generating icons, connecting signals, and using a vcontainer. All three powerful tools added to make collectibles easy to see!
This was a blast of a game jam. I am excited to see what other people make!