Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags

Taking the theme literally -- Change Slinging Simulator! Updated with Retrospective!

A topic by boxtown created Jul 11, 2020 Views: 262 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 6
Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

Alright! First game jam, first game -- why not just go for the obvious: Change Simulator!

The idea is to sling coins and bills for paying customers needing their change for purchases. 

Accuracy counts! Incorrect change is sure to raise some eyebrows from your manager. Keep your job, and sling some coin.

Hope to keep the updates rolling, and looking forward to making progress for you all. Thanks for the read!


Edit: Game is available to play, in-browser now! 

https://boxtown.itch.io/get-yer-change

your idea is so creative!! I can't wait to see your progress! :D

Submitted

WOW! I can never think of an idea like this! This is beautiful! Now I really want to see what this game will be like!

Submitted

Interesting but the idea in the core is similar to Papers Please

Host

omg i love the pitch for this, its so straightforward and easy to understand. best of luck this jam!

Submitted (2 edits)

Hey, thanks everyone for the interest! As updated in the title, I've submitted the game: https://boxtown.itch.io/get-yer-change

I'd like to offer a little retrospective on a few  points and the process, alongside my commits for the project~!

On the first day of the jam,  I started out with a bare bones UI and built out the basic systems.  It looked something like this:

day-1

Afterwards, I updated the game to get some environment art going and built out more systems:  1) customer happiness, 2) a bonus for perfect change,  and  3) a basic timer to manage the game. 

I thought about making the game a little more complex, by adding a real 'till' to the register. Characters started the game with the register randomly seeded, customers would populate the register when they show up, and you have limits on the change that you can give. This took about a day, and was a pretty robust system behind the scenes.  Turns out it wasn't fun, and it was possible to run out of change. Instead of adding a change reload system, I figured just to scrap the whole thing. 

Really after that, the system was done.  In my opinion this was the easiest part.  I'd work the next few days on building out more sprites and animations. The game moved forward, and got close to how it looks in the finished version!


After the cash started falling, I filled up the register, and added some outlines on hover:


And at the very end, it was crunch time. I didn't even actually have sound until the last day. freesound.org was a great resource for this! There was a lot of content, but I picked a few things that seemed good enough. It was also at this point that I added a proper game over menu, and enforced perfect change. All this time you could have given as much money as you wanted to the customer! The idea was that an angry manager would pop out, and eventually fire you for giving away all the money in the register, but I decided to scrap this too for time and simplicity's sake.

Overall, I'm happy with this! I think that cutting features was the proper way to go, and let me focus on the core functionality. A few things were way harder thatn I though with Godot. Spinning up text labels was actually pretty tricky the first time. You need to import fonts! Also I downloaded Affinity Designer for the first time, and learned about flat art design, and made animations with Pixel FX Designer.  This was a great jam, and I'm looking forward to future ones. Thanks all for reading, and take a peek at the game! https://boxtown.itch.io/get-yer-change


Here are the commit logs, from newest to oldest

Date:   Sun Jul 26 00:14:52 2020 -0700    (Committed files after submitting of course!) Added sounds assets, enforced perfect change, added stats at game over menu. Basically "finished" the game.

Date:   Fri Jul 24 22:28:20 2020 -0700    Added hover states for outlines

Date:   Thu Jul 23 21:55:52 2020 -0700    Added outlines

Date:   Wed Jul 22 21:03:25 2020 -0700    Timer increments four times faster, and removed the "has change" mechanic

Date:   Tue Jul 21 21:36:09 2020 -0700    Added timer scene

Date:   Sun Jul 19 21:43:32 2020 -0700    Added star animation for perfect change, and register currency sprites

Date:   Sat Jul 18 23:49:53 2020 -0700    Added coin dropping shenanigans

Date:   Fri Jul 17 22:34:57 2020 -0700    Added currency sprites, and collision click detecting

Date:   Thu Jul 16 21:24:09 2020 -0700    Added currency count system to monitor the types of bills exchanged between player and npc

Date:   Wed Jul 15 20:41:45 2020 -0700    Added game over state and quick quit

Date:   Tue Jul 14 22:01:38 2020 -0700    Added timer node, and reorganized labels/other nodes

Date:   Mon Jul 13 21:25:25 2020 -0700    Added customer happiness, unhappy customer threshold, and perfect change systems

Date:   Sun Jul 12 20:11:23 2020 -0700    Added initial character and environment assets. Basic layout and styling for world scene

Date:   Sat Jul 11 22:57:05 2020 -0700    Initial commit -- Basic UI and functionality