💥 Building FlashIT

I wrote my Post-mortem for my personal blog, because the itch limitations drive me insane. For the best experience and all my fancy videos go here -> https://kana.games/post/flashIT-MFGJ-24-post-mortem

The Game

Imagine you are in an elevator with a random person, and they tell you:

FlashIT is an action puzzle game set in cyberspace. You are the last line of defense against an army of evil AI bots. Use your special flash device to banish them from the digital realm. Be resourceful, be nimble, be quick.

What picture would this evoke in your mind? Would you leave the elevator on the next floor?

Now, here is what I came up with after two weeks of game jamming at My First Game Jam 2024.

Play it right here right now!

The Idea

We spent the first two days brainstorming ideas. The jam came with the optional theme: ☀️ Light ☀️

Here are some highlights:

• Weak golfing
• Puzzle game where you have to flash all your teammates
• A person (or all people) lighter than air, so everyone is just floating around
• Light bulb with burnout

Guess which one made the cut.

Puzzle game where you have to flash all your teammates

I tried really hard to avoid building a straight-up puzzle game because I thought it would be way too hard to design fun puzzles. But for unknown reasons we chose this idea over all the deep and thoughtful ones 😄

We created a small Game Design Doc in the hope of keeping us focused.

Here are the game mechanics we wrote down and what we ended up with in the final game:

Building the Game

You can check out the full dev log with progress GIFs here ➡️

Week 1

The first two days were spent in the concept phase, building out ideas. After deciding on the flashing game, I started creating my to-dos. I keep it very simple at the beginning, once I tackle a point, I add more details. I worked my way through the points and created FP Controls, the flash, and the first 3 levels. My plan was to have a feature-complete MVP at the end of week one so I could spend the second week fully working on polish, visuals, and sound.

Week 2

It turns out building a point system can be quite a heavy task, so I kept coding for two additional days before I was able to focus on visuals. On day 11, I started working on the cyberpunk/cyberspace and added a lot of particle volumes in the process. The last two days I spend on ambience, SFX, UI icons, scoreboard and the possibility to restart the game.

Looking Back at It

Now, a good week after the jam, I’m very happy with what we accomplished. There were no major scope missteps like in my last submission for MFGJ-23. So we were able to produce a complete package.

Things That Worked Out:

• Made some early reasonable scope decisions like:
  • Enemies don’t move
  • Player is heavily restricted in the play area
  • Only one key gameplay system
• Also, a level-based structure is great because they are naturally decoupled. That allows, in theory, for multiple people to work on different levels, and levels can just be added or left out based on time constraints without the whole game breaking apart.

Things to Improve on the Next Run:

• Focus on the core gameplay loop more, and add fluff later or cut it.
  • Like the point system
• Think about visual style and theme earlier.
  • The art direction and theme came in pretty hot, so there was not much time to refine them.
• The plan to enter feature freeze after week 1 is a good one, so try to reach that goal next time 🤞

After Jam Updates

I have lot’s of ideas:

• Level replay system
• Flash follow cam
• Extra points for hitting enemies directly
• Modulation areas:
  • Area where the flash detonation timer is increased or decreased
  • Area where the flash explodes instantly
  • Area where the flash is duplicated

Also, playtest feedback:

• Make level completion more clear.
  • Maybe by adding a level complete camera transition (might get annoying), or by changing the exit portal colors. Even toggling the portal based on flash and enemy count would be something.
• Add a top view or mini-map to give the player a better overview of the level.

So, lots of possibilities, but I’m currently still working on my previous submitted game, Circle Pusher and I’m more excited about couch co-op or multiplayer shenanigans than single-player puzzles. Even if the open points sound fun to work on!

That’s It!

If you have any questions, you can find me on Twitter @KANAjetzt 👍