itch.io

I’ve entered a few jams before, but none since becoming a parent two years ago (turns out your free time goes bye-bye, who knew?). So even though this jam’s dev period was longer than most of the jams I entered before, I knew from the start that I pretty much had like 6 hours or so available (around 2 hours per day on the weekend, bouncing up and down with my daughter in the baby carrier, and whatever little time I could grab here and there in downtime at work or during lunch breaks).

I knew I needed a simple idea to be achievable in the time I had available, and when I saw the theme it came pretty quickly, although honestly I kinda worked backwards from realising I could backronym “SPIN” to describe something serious. I basically started thinking of words starting with ‘N’ and as soon as I had ‘navigation’ the rest fell into place: navigate by spinning the earth. Then I just had to come up with the rest of the title. Serious & Precise International Navigation. Nailed it.

I had more ideas I’d have liked to implement if I had more time to work on it:

• highlight the target country
• boost/brake power-ups so you have a chance to adjust your spins (probably limited use, 3x per run or so)

And I would have liked a bit more time to work on exactly how the planet spins:

• currently the speed is set by the average speed of the mouse drag. I considered making it a “click and drag an arrow to set direction and strength”, which might be more familiar to players (something like what SpIn A Hurry did in this jam!), but decided that felt less like spinning the planet than the method I went for. Not sure I’d make the same choice if I started again. Even if so, it might feel better with some more complex curve defining input -> speed rather than the linear relationship I have now.
• and currently the planet slows down at a constant rate. Again, I wonder if some sort of curve might help it feel more intuitive/predictable/satisfying.

Overall though, given the time I had available and the fact it’s my first completed project in Godot*, I’m pretty happy with what I put together.

Serious & Precise International Navigation

*I say my first completed one because I do have an older Godot project I’ve been working on for a while, at least in theory, but I don’t think I’ve opened it this year.