Global Game Jam 2021 Devlog

This is a recollection of how the development of this project went in 2021! This was originally a blog post here, but I wanted to share this on our official itch.io page as well.

Over the weekend, my brother and I worked on our 7th Global Game Jam project together! This time was a bit different, since we weren't in the same room together, we worked virtually. It turned out not being all that different since we were screensharing and voice chatting the entire time. We just had to use Google Drive to transfer files instead of a flash drive.

This year was also different with everything being online, so the theme "Lost and Found" was announced early in the week, giving us some extra time to brainstorm ideas.

On Tuesday, we brainstormed what the game would be about. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, I drew the walk animations for our two playable characters, Pamchan and Gojo.

Friday was when we started to work on the game more. I figured out some of the basic UI and we started programming the basic mechanics in RPG Maker MZ. This was our first time making a GGJ game in MZ, all the others had been in MV.

Saturday is when we developed most of the game. I started by getting a dialogue system working and some of the beginning story portions.

My brother finished one of the backgrounds, I imported the UI, and he got a system working where objects would be highlighted when going near them.

We continued to program mechanics, finalize art, and work throughout all of Saturday night and into Sunday. I ended up working on story and overall sequence of events more closely with the gameplay than I usually do in these projects, so it was fun.

Towards the end of the night, I helped clean up some of our more sketchy backgrounds.

And then after the last tests, I added the map and the ability for it to fill up areas over time as you explore new places.

And finally, we made the finishing touches and uploaded the final build to itch.io and the GGJ website here! You can download it for Windows, macOS, or play online in the browser with the itch.io link.

This was the first time where I was able to play through our game and then go back and make small changes afterward. Normally I'm too tired and ready to be done, but this time I was motivated to make small changes and just make it better. There are still some things I would've liked to do to improve it, but I'm happy with how it turned out! And this was definitely the most ambitious project we did for one of these, but we ended up finishing it!

So in conclusion, some of the things that I learned and tried out in this GGJ include:

• Storing dialogue styles, pictures, and transitions in Common Events so that I could use them like functions, calling them every time a dialogue event happens. I started doing this with my other RPG project for game mechanics, but this was the first time I tried it for showing dialogue, and it made me less hesitant to do transitions and effects.
• Using player position data! We used this to switch between characters and save their map positions. We also used it for positioning the dialogue bubbles above their heads. I still could've played around with it a bit more to make those positions more precise, but it was a learning experience!
• Using simple switches to show a map that progressively unlocks each time you visit a new place. This one I actually made fairly easily in the last few minutes before we uploaded the project, it was just something I hadn't thought to do before!
• Utilizing plugins for allowing everything to be played with the mouse or keyboard. Previously I had always tried to program one or the other, but allowing the player to choose which gameplay style they'd prefer was a great outcome!

Check out our game and let me know what you think in the comments!