Picking up things. Not really so much for a puzzle but a goal for each puzzle. Eventually you return to this place to put the orb thingies in. I really didn't want an GUI for a long time, but I figured at least making up made up symbols will retain the vibe of the game. Need to make more backgrounds, which doesn't take much figuring out anymore, but is just a grind.

So my plan is to make a finished version of the first half of the game (probably not gonna be very long) to at least achieve some level of completedness. The only real unknown element of development time is just the puzzles. I've created so many puzzles similar to this in another game before, so the design likely isn't going to be put into question, just if I can program them effectively. The activated floor is pretty much the base of every puzzle, but some of the design twists might be difficult to execute.

todo:
-program the thing that opens the locked door once you've collected all 3 pieces
-make 3 backgrounds for places that loop back into locked door room
-program a basic elevator (and make the background for it)
-program several puzzles for the upper areas (one continuous puzzle that builds on elements carried throughout the room)
-make backgrounds for them
-make a ladder sliding puzzle of sorts (easier than the last)
-make backgrounds for that
-make backgrounds for the sight-seeing areas at the beginning of the game + add that ladder interaction at the begginning

-maybe some intro cutscene idk

can I do this in a week? we shall see. it lines up with being possible per day.

due to the extension of the deadline I decided to take a break and just focus on what I feel like working on atm. Basically puzzles without visuals figured out. Top is essentially a puzzle where you push down a key orb from a high place, but block yourself off to picking it up, and bottom is a conveyor belt puzzle where you alternate between two control panels to bring it towards you. Both are teaching ways to alternate and reverse how you utilize panels but I'm designing as I program at this point. I kind of like how the shape of the conveyor belt room drives me to sort of zigzag the conveyor belt layout to match it (which the design is heading towards anyway).

Have not worked on it as much as I wanted to as there's 4 days left. But I did manage to visually update the puzzles (in the above post) complete with backgrounds. I plan to release a demo that will likely contain 3-4 puzzles and then a to be continued screen. I want to actually continue this project even though I told myself it's usually better to try and complete something and just move on to some other jam. But I do like the potential this project has as a decent puzzle adventure. So I will give myself the rest of September to complete the rest of it.

For now the goal is to finish up the rest of the backgrounds (there are 3 before coming to this area) and program the point of getting the orbs in the first place (I almost count it as a 4th puzzle)


Push an inaccessible orb off, but pushing it blocks your path. Puzzle explores the use of using both directions (the door puzzle before only requires one).


(Still need to make the elevation of the orb going from the conveyor belt to the ground make more sense) but the puzzle introduces alternating between panels to solve things.

Issues with this project stem from being too ambitious and overestimating the 1 month time. As I don't feel comfortable releasing a game that has puzzles that seem like they could be explored more (or "resolved" to put it in musical terms). Yet due to the inspirations and how I imagined the game to be, maybe this is the best case scenario, a jam purely for getting a rock solid foundation.

Assuming you get all of the orbs or "keys" (all laid out for testing purposes) from the puzzles you solved, the door that locks you out until you place them into the slots is now implemented. Very lazily inefficient copy pasted programming was done to accomplish this but at least everything functional for the planned demo is done. Last thing to do is to do the backgrounds and maybe a ladder climbing functionality/animation.

If things go well I might have a day to just add meaningless interactions to make the game more "alive" (but then again I have a lot of sound effects to implement still). But yeah potentially a day of polish to slot in.

Finally added the first area of the game where you noticed an object falling through the sky with your little telescope. Gotta go down and check it out. Going down the ladder surprisingly didnt take that long to implement, though it has no real functional purpose (will be useful later on). So the status right now is that the jam is due in 1 hour. But I have 2 backgrounds left to do (unsurprisingly) for the little teaser demo I'm cooking up to feel submittable. So later on tonight or tomorrow I'll just get those 2 backgrounds done without pushing myself too much.  The jam seems lenient about stuff like that anyway.

The next post I'll make will likely detail the tech demo release and what my plans are for beyond this jam, and I'll likely continue in the actual game page's blog.

um when this game come out