itch.io

Just that - congratulations for finishing!

 UPDATE: No longer needed. 

Hey all. My small team's artists do not have enough bandwidth for a few art assets before our deadline (December 18th). Does anyone want to help and have contributing credits?  We need to assemble and debug our game before the January 2nd submission.

We need a metal circular shield with an emblazon on it, a cylindrical glass potion bottle, and a metal smithing hammer. The fun part is they all talk, so you will be adding eyes and mouths. I can give you art style references and scale references. You'd have some creative freedom as well.

 If you're interested in picking up a bit of work, let me know (HD Simplicityy) or message toppop7 on Discord (Doofenschmalphys). Thank you!

Hey everyone. Some may have seen my update for my team as they scrolled down. We'd like an environmental artist to help us out. We have two I think and a third would make things easier. Message me (HD Simplicityy @ihaveajarofdirty) or Doofenschmalphys on Discord.

Forgot about this forum for sharing updates. My team has been so in the weeds team-forming and starting our game that I just remembered to share.

Courtesy of topop7 as well as indie developers from a local community I am in, we've made a team of seven. I'm writing the story and dialogue. topop7 and two others are helping flesh out character and gameplay moments as well as editing. We've got two or three artists and a composer. We thought the concept of a mysterious voice behind a door was interesting. Decided to stick with it get this thing rolling.  We just dont have a team name yet.

Im unsure how much we will share as the jam goes on. Whatever happens, I think my team has a neat experience coming. 

Good luck to everyone!

If unity y plugs into this other engine, that can be useful. 

Heym toppop7 and I are forming a team. I've got some concepts I've passed by him, which you can see in my thread. Take a look and let me know if youre interested.

Toppop7 and I have these ideas. A combo of concepts I already have and his imput:

1) A man is locked out of his industrial design office building. He needs to find his spare key, retrieve a powerful book, and not die. It has a plot twist. An unfinished concept and definitely not fairy tale-related, but we have an idea to make it such.

2) A bored guy coaxes his friends into forming a kingdom-wide 4v4 tournament, where the magic powersets are globs of earthen material they can fire in streams. Its the premise for my fantasy novel project, but in game form. Probably save that for myself unless we find some cool way to twist it.

3) An electrical worker must solve puzzles to turn back on a city's power in a rainstorm. The last obstacle is a big house with a boss fight. 

He can work in engines and I can write/do narrative design. If you'd like to join let us know!

Replied!

Hey all. Im Matthew. Ive worked on one indie game team before, and I dont know if it ever got finished. Hoping to find a team to start with next month. Im available starting October 3rd.

Ive got sci fi and fantasy writing under my belt, including a novel being revised. Fairy Tales are neat; never really written one. Check out my portfolio: http://matthewbirdzell.com

Contact me here or email (matt.birdzell@gmail.com) if you want to team up. I do have a concept I'd like to work on, but Im happily defer to yours.

Hi. I write fantasy as well. Im looking for a team. Do you have level design experience?

Thanks lysander and whoever for hosting! All I have are sprite placeholders that look like childs play. Not going to submit that lol. Next time I participate in a game jam, I want to have a basic understanding of an engine. Maybe Ill find someone needing a writer. 

Learning Unity was tough in such a short timespan. But its versatile. 

Take care,

-Matthew

So you need to add an end objective to it.  Right now, its just find buckets. They give you points. So is there a score to reach within the time limit? Is there a max number, then the game ends? Is there a more complex level?

It runs smoothly. Oh, and the third person camera is inverted.

Neat concept!

Game Title/URL: No Title

Pitch/Information: An electrical tech has to restore power to three locations in his home city while getting away, or meleeing, bad guys donning rubber horseheads. 

I'd like feedback on: The concept as a narrative arc. It is actually a parred down version of a platformer I have in mind. I just don't know now that I want to write/design one. 

Essentially the whole thing is there is a man who has a big sale to complete. In leaving his small family at home, He is tasked to travel across a landscape of woodlands and some treaterous open landscape to complete it, while fending off these random, mysterious strangers. What is he carrying? A backpack of power-ups: a sci fi or fantasy style power boost to building, well, stuff. Buildings, catapults, hospitals, homes, carriages. The likes. And there is this bad guy who he figures out is sending strangers (enemy AI) to hurt or kill him, and take the power boosts.

He comes to find out that the bad guy is a rival. This good guy gets cornered and is forced to just give him the powerups. Or his family gets hurt. So what would he do? Secretly give him a 25% power boost. A quarter of his need for his own schemes. But it doesnt let him go. And he ends of fighting, then sneaking his way out of the rival's hometown, and being chased back home.

I need help on: Well, level design lol. I'll have to learn an engine more to make it playable. Otherwise Im writing it as a game story.

itch.io is only letting me show this image. I have a few rough sketches of the concept. The one up there is the start of the game.

This looks like a fifth grader got bored in class and started learning Unity.  Don't judge me :P 

I like your concept. Its silly, its horror (not usually my cup of tea), but in a wacky scenario. Especially Ronald McDonald lol. 

I dabbled in Unreal Engine 5 a few short weeks ago and realized how much of a learning curve it has. Its complex, but its so powerful. All these options that just overwhelmed me for this jam. I jumped over to Unity and felt the same. 

If you gave yourself three full months, you can have this game made. Probably.

Good luck. :D

-Matthew

Im going to submit what I have: just placeholders for sprites and an opening chunk of level. Ill include my rough storyboarding. Where do I submit it? Thanks.

Nicely done man.

Dev Log to round out July.

So after considering how much I would be able to make, I sort of cut down on my concept. I work full time, and would have two or thee hours of creative time during the evenings to work on a game. Thats a fair amount, but I get worn out somewhat by my work. What I'm doing is making some static sprite concepts and a piece of a level. 

 I dont really know how to animate this stuff. Or really anything outside of placing objects. Which is fine, because its better than nothing. It looks terrible, haha. 

My concept became  an electrical worker who needs to power  cycle three obstacles to restart the local powerplant to his hometown. Along the way, he has to use powerups (carried in a backpack) to use in cycling power supplies, generators, or locks. Opposing forces? These dudes wearing those rubber horse heads. Why? Because its so far fetched that its funny to me. They're told to get his powerups from someone  who wants to route all the power through his plant.

First obstacle: a draw bridge stuck raised.

Second: Don't know.

Third: a large padlock, unlocking a door into the power station, which has a puzzle to restart everything. 

So yeah, as you can see, this isn't much of anything.  lol. I'd need to learn an engine to make a functioning prototype. But really, I want to storyboard the bigger concept and write a screenplay. 

-Matthew.

I appreciate the Halo references here. 

Hi.

If I wanted to storyboard my concept, then write its screenplay, will that be fine? Ive never used Unity much until this event. Im not feeling enthusiastic about it; more the writer type.

Great artstyle. Keep up the good work.

July 26th, 2023 Update:

Been sketching out rough level sections on paper. Ive decided to just do the best I can with my own concept. Trying out Unity first. Its a new challenge to use an engine other than Twine. I tried Unreal 5 lately, and that was just hard. 

In the case that I don't find my stride landing, Ill write this as a screenplay.

-Matthew

Hi. I do have that.  HD Simplicityy with nickname ihaveajarofdirt. 

Right now, I haven't found a team to join, so im "storyboarding" my idea. 

-Matthew

I haven't played Breath of the Wild, actually. Seems that you know what you want to do though. If you'd want any help, just send me a message here. 

-Matthew

The premise made me imagine it having some written backstory. If its one character, then he or she can have a few dialogue barks. Like observing the puzzle difficulty, or the erieness, or the goal of the game. Have a few quips for comedy relief. 

If that is something you want to consider, do let me know. I would at least take a closer look at what you have before going forward.

-Matthew

I like the concept. 

Do you need dialogue for this? Little text boxes showing his internal thinking sprinkled around, or some background lore?

-Matthew

Hi! Im a writer looking for a team. I have a concept of my own, but Id love to contribute to a team.

Hey! 

Im joining the jam with an already busy schedule. Ive never gotten in to one before. Thought to try this because it would be my first. 

Im a writer by night, social media manager by day, who has worked on one commercial indie game. Written bits of my own projects in Twine and screenwriting. And am revising a novel. For a videogame, I have a GDD for a short level written up. It could be sci fi or fantasy; leaning sci fi for it.  I'd aim for a 15 minute long level, however, thats not for sure.

A short description: A man has to travel outside home to deliver his famous power-up potion/concoction to an important person. But, he soon encounters someone else desiring it. He doesn't know yet, but its for an obviously nefarious purpose. 

Melee and platform -focused. I'd like to make it in Unity and use its story-plugins. Unity... not an engine I have experience with. Having the following would be helpful to make this:

Unity Level designer

Unity Artist 

Unity coder and sound designer.

Im the writer.

Message me here if you are interested!

Heyyo. I'm a content and creative writer interested in the two week slow jam. I've worked on one team-based indie game, currently on Steam early access, written short stories and am revising a sci fi novel. Nothing is published. In past years, I have made attempts at finding a team to help out. 

Preferred genres are fantasy, science fiction, and adventure. I enjoy dabbling in branching narratives.

Experienced in:

Screenwriting

Dialogue Barks

Character Descriptions

Stylistically, I go with humor,  banter,  epic scale, or emotionally moving stories. 

Connect with me on Discord or email if you wanna talk: 

HD Simplicityy#7294

matt.birdzell@gmail.com

https://matthewbirdzell.com/ 

Thanks for playing BlueChippy. 

I left those 'box1' labels there as I didn't know how to hide them, or label them correctly with words that make sense narratively. I did it a bit better in my new release.

Ive struggled with those emotional hooks using just prose. Paring down word count into using specific words can do that. 

All good ideas. Makes for an easier hiring process in the future.

Perhaps I can try my local Game Jam again or join their Slack community. The sorts of games I saw in the few hang out times I was at were hardly any story games. Thought, "I'll make my own writing first."

Adapting your ideas to another team is a hugely important skill. Was that easy or hard after a ways of trying?

Jam-ception meta narrative. I like it. I went to the opening night for a game jam a few months ago this year. Didnt find anyone I wanted to work with for a story game. Still cool to see it all. 

Did you have anyone ask for help at your game jam?