Posted October 04, 2023 by CKenshin
After having done a couple of game jam submissions with Danmokou in the past, I felt more confident in forming a team for Game Jam 11. I opened up my team to be pretty flexible with whoever was interested in joining to be able to add something new that I couldn’t do before. In the end I was able to have join me a SolarisSect as a writer, Saishoo as a sprite artist and musician, and Einhope as a portrait artist. This was going to be a big change overall since I had usually leaned on Dairi portrait art and provided sprites, so figuring out how to integrate their unique assets was going to make for an interesting challenge.
When the jam’s theme of Immortality was announced I didn’t have too many ideas at first aside from a very played out Mokou vs Kaguya in the bamboo forest. Which if I was going solo again would be the only concept I’d be able to do on my own. Some of the other ideas I was dartboarding went along the lines of…
Reimu vs Biten
Biten vs Shou
Marisa vs Enoko
Enoko Seiran duo
I think for some reason I really wanted to use Biten...
Eventually Solaris and I were throwing ideas around Enoko and then eventually Mima and then we decided that a Mima vs Enoko game sounded like the most interesting idea.
The original pitch I had was that Mima goads Enoko into a fight with Mima threatening to harm Marisa if she doesn’t. Enoko would then step up to fight Mima for Marisa’s sake.
One of the few warnings I got from my team is that playing as Mima who was actively antagonizing Enoko wouldn’t have a good impression. There were even thoughts of doing player Enoko vs Mima instead with how the story was going. However, I really wanted to explore to make Enoko patterns rather than make patterns for Mima, so the approach we went for instead was to make sure Mima wasn’t that much of a jerk
With Enoko as a boss, the main concepts I had thought of for her patterns were “Three heads”, “Traps”, and “Fire”. With “Three Heads” I wanted to create patterns where there were three origins of firing to give the impression that she is attacking with three heads from three different angles. This is already a thing in Touhou 19 with Enoko’s spell Three Heads “Cerberus Fire”, however I wanted to explore this idea further.
With the concept of “Traps” I wanted to convey idea of placing obstacles to stumble the player as well as confining the player to a specific space.
Finally fire, which is Enoko’s main element shown in Touhou 19. I kind of felt like there was only so much I could do with fire and it would be pretty limiting. There were ideas to explore biting and scratching, but it didn’t feel like enough on its own. I wanted to do more with Enoko beyond her original ideas in Touhou 19. I was looking up the monster Cerberus in other media and video games until I remembered the Cerberus in Devil May Cry 3. That Cerberus had the element of ice which embodies the 9th circle of hell which could be fitting. However, thinking even one step beyond that I remembered King Cerberus from Devil May Cry 5, a three headed demon dog with one head ice, one head fire, and one head lightning. I remembered it to be a really memorable visual with all three elements opening the way for many more pattern concept possibilities.
Despite the theme of immortality, the idea that I really wanted for Enoko to embody was growth. That despite her being immortal, she had the capacity to continue to grow and evolve into something else. If she could be hyped up to be a Cerberus, then maybe she could evolve to new strengths and powers as well.
Vision of the original game
This game jam was supposed to be a chance for me to learn generic enemy patterns. The original idea was for Mima to come into the forest and fight some fairies until she comes across Enoko. Mima would goad Enoko into a fight. After fighting through a couple patterns, Enoko would run away. Mima would give chase, fighting through more fairies until she cornered Enoko. Mima would then threaten Marisa and in order to step up to protect Marisa, Enoko would awaken to new powers. Mima would fight the newly awakened Enoko with new ice and lightning spells with a final spell showcasing all three elements as the big cap off.
Time constraints
If you could probably guess, there are no generic enemies or fairies in the game. In fact, I had to cut down a lot due to time constraints, which was unfortunate since I still have yet to learn about generic enemies. Instead I had to cut it down to Mima and Enoko meeting at first, cutting out the chase sequence and having Enoko’s awakening happening right after. I originally planned to have 10 patterns. 2 nons and 2 spells involving fire. 1 non and spell involving ice. 1 non and spell involving lightning. A survival and then a final spell.
Alot of time constraints
I was really struggling during this jam, especially for pattern design. The jam theme being announced the weekend of was really daunting because usually I’d be able to brainstorm patterns with the theme being announced with time before the actual jam. This time I really just had to think of an idea and then just try it out and hope it turned out to be a good idea. However, sometimes this lead into massive time sinks.
The time sink that is called Gnawing at the Great Cage of Ice
The idea that I had for the ice spell was for Enoko to trap you in a cage of ice while she gnawed at the cage, causing bits of ice to fly at you. The cage of ice fit the theme of “Traps” and the biting at the cage from different angles felt very Cerberus like. The idea started off very simple. Spawn a circle of ice bullets around the player and send ice like scratches to gnaw at the cage. When the scratches hit the cage it would cause the bullets to transform into a type of homing bullet to fly at the player. First off, just simply spawning a circle of ice bullets would never work on its own because if the player was ever off center from Enoko then they would never be able to be in an angle to fire at her. I then had to change it so that the cage would continue to spawn over and over again to wherever the player moved. I experimented a lot with where the fangs were able to spawn from, the speed at which they fly, the behavior of the bullets when the fangs strike the cage. It took a lot of fine tuning to be able to get it to where it was now and its still not even to the original vision of the spell I had.
One of the big lessons I learned from this jam is that sometimes you have to look at an unrealized pattern and move on, especially if there’s a time crunch. There are a lot of patterns I wasn’t too happy with that I kept wasting time tweaking. I wish some of the nons were more varied and random. I wish Lucent Burst Overheat was more random as well. There was an idea of Watch Your Step “Gnarly Hot Stuff” that involved Enoko firing out a winding spew of fire, however through time constraints I had to do the shape of the fire the way it was. The lightning spell is also really jank, and I don’t know why its so buggy outside of my own dev environment. It’s truly a haunted spell.
However, the more I was attempting to fix some of my ideas the more time I was wasting that could have gone to creating new patterns instead. I had to physically pull myself away from working on some patterns because if I kept doing so I would not be able to finish. In the end, I just couldn’t think of a good ice non spell, a lightning non spell, and a survival so I cut the amount of patterns down from 10 to 7.
There are patterns I really like though. Gnawing at the Great Cage of Ice is still one of my favorite ideas I was able to carve out, even though it doesn’t truly live up to my original idea. I also really love Roar of the King – The Fangs of the Three Headed Yamainu as the big cap off ending pattern.
Maximizing assets to pivot.
In the end, no matter how hard I tried, I could not make an ice and lightning nonspell to save my life during the jam window. All I had were an ice themed spell and a lightning themed spell pattern that I was happy with. With the deadline looming and me realizing that I would not be able to make those nonspells in time, I decided to rely on assets to pivot. I decided that if I believe my ice, lightning, and last spell were good enough for me, then it would be good enough to showcase one after the other. I asked Einhope if they could make versions of Enoko’s portrait with blue traps, yellow traps, and then one with red and blue traps. I’d use a really fancy spell cut in using the Enoko portraits with the colored traps to really sell the idea that she was transforming into a new power. Having spell cut ins one after the other with changing Enoko portraits with new colored traps would continue to sell the feeling that she was becoming progressively more powerful.
Einhope was able to deliver me those assets and I was able to make custom cut ins with each one. It’s a really simple effect, but I think it had a great effect on impact overall.
The brevity of the game overall actually did help with how the track syncs with the game. Saishoo managed to deliver a great rendition of Enoko’s theme and the length of the game syncs up really well with the flow of the track. I think the drop after the midsection dialogue elicits a powerful feeling.
Solaris definitely was able to backdrop the story between Mima and Enoko well and was able to give the game a narrative depth that I hadn’t been able to achieve with my games before.
Conclusion
Despite some mishaps, I’m very happy with what I was able to deliver what I was able to. Working with Saishoo, Einhope, and Solaris was a real joy and I was able to create something much greater than I was able to on my own and I think overall the people who were able to play it too also enjoyed the game as well.