Hey hey, this is my first game jam and my first stab at making...y'know...a "game."

I'm trying to keep things fairly simple, which is really hard for me because I tend to go pie in the sky immediately and then use that as an excuse to not finish. So I'm using the theme of "LOCKED" and doing a quick little whodunnit game called The Right Todd.

You play as a person trying to get into their friend's apartment building to water their plant while they're on vacation. Except...you were given the wrong key, so you're locked out. Your friend said to ask their neighbor Todd for a key, but all the neighbors are named Todd. So you have to work out which Todd is the right Todd from a handful of clues you were given.

All of the "clues" come in the form of icons or objects that you drag and drop onto the different Todds to get their response and narrow down which Todd is the Todd you're looking for. So like...if the clue is that Todd is a real grade A tickle freak, you'd drag a feather onto them to see if they giggle. 

I'm using Construct 3 to build it out, in the spirit of using a format of conditional logic that I'm comfortable with from my day job as a UX writer. Right now I'm just temping in some elements to make sure I know how to make things happen, so things are VERY wireframe-y right now, as you can see:

(The Todds will all look different in the actual game)

Going to try and do 1 clue and 4 Todds to start, see what I can glean from doing animation states for each of the potential Todds, and see how fancy I can get with some VO and a short intro/outro cutscene using limited art...then if I have time, expand out to a few more clues. This'll probably be a very short game, and possibly not a FUN game, but mostly just wanna pick up some skills to roll into the next thing.

To keep myself accountable, I'm gonna try and post little updates here and there as I keep fleshing stuff out.

Anyhow, nice to meet everyone! Good luck with all our projects!

This concept has me guffawing, it's so clever! I cannot wait to see how this turns out!

oh my god this example is slaying me........ i literally cannot wait to see this animated.

Ah, I love the premise! Nice implementation of the theme, too. Looking forward to seeing how this develops ^^

Minimal progress today, mostly figuring out a script outline for the clues and continuing to futz with color palette and layout of the 4 Todds on screen.

I did do some initial doodles of my Todds, more "Todd busts" than anything:

But then as I started playing in Photoshop, I've decided to just make them sorta free-standing little blob Todds. Here's a quick idle animation for one of 'em.

The other thing: to try and simplify the "plot" a bit, I'm changing it to having the player character come across a door to a secret club, and instructions are left for them about how to find the right Todd in order to earn entry. It'll allow me to keep some of the visuals more abstract and not need to spend a ton of time on expository stuff to get to this relatively simple mechanic. Secret clubs, doors in the middle of blank space, blob creatures...sure, why not?

I would die for this Todd, and am excited to see the others! You've already done a lot, I'm excited to see more!

Oh my gosh, this concept is hysterical! Can't wait to see how it pans out! 

I loved the concept already but this Todd was enough to win me over entirely. I can’t wait to see how it develops!

Just some bits and blurbs in the last day or so. Got enough of a start screen ready to roll, started scripting dialogue for the short opening cinematic and the clue section, and dropped in a hint sheet.

Got two more rough Todd designs going, but I’m waiting till I have all the basic shapes before I go back and do a lil bit of color palette syncing. Here’s Todd 2 and Todd 3:

I also figured out how to actually do idle states in Construct, and some other details stuff like that...blinking, etc.

I have Monday off, so hoping to get a fair bit more done then...weekends tend to be lost time while chasing a 3 year old!

I admire the pink Todd's fabulous hat. Keep up the good work! ^^

Okay, final stretch!

Here's the progress I've slowly made last few days:

• My game screen is looking a lot different than that first wireframe (thankfully). I'm going softer, overall...and juxtaposing the real life photos with the simplistic blobby characters seems funny. So right now, the mechanic is dead simple...you drag and drop a clue in front of one of the Todds and he'll tell you how he feels about it via dialogue text above him.

• To spice up that dialogue, I figured out how to write into a JSON file and load that into an array in Construct 3, so I have 5ish responses per clue, per Todd. I'm gonna try to make the responses a little vaguer so that it's not immediately obvious which Todd fits the bill (though I still think it'll be a pretty simple puzzle to solve).
• I found some lovely piano jazz to be my soundtrack and have implemented that.
• I've written most of the opening "cinematic." This took longer than expected to get a couple of one-sided dialogue lines to fire in sequence...totally a result of me being new to the software. But felt triumphant once I cracked that!
• Started sketching out the design for the overall itch.io game page. I love seeing games on itch that use the preview page in interesting ways, so I'm going to try and have that page sort of act as a start screen of sorts. I DID program a simple start screen into the game, which was helpful just to learn how to animate button presses, but may cut it if I can figure this part out.

What's Left:

• Program the win/lose state...which also includes implementing the "select the right Todd" thing. It'll either be a similar drag and drop element with a submit, like a badge that says "THIS IS TODD." Or maybe jump to a different layout and click which Todd from the lineup is the right one. Haven't fully decided yet.
• I need to animate a few more reactions for each Todd...a positive and negative for each, to go with the appropriate text.
• Also need to animate a simple two frame mouth movement when dialogue is firing.
• Details work...maybe adding a few more elements to pretty up the game screen, adding some hover states to the photos, and SFX for everything.

So yeah! Little bits of triumph, lots of bits of detail work. I think the thing I'm learning is that improvising is fun, and a way that my brain knows how to work, but I'm excited to have a more detailed plan going into the next game...which I think I came up with an interesting idea for last night while I was doodling. So...here's hoping I survive this first one to get to the next!