itch.io

Looks fast-paced and fun!

I made a Missile Command-esque game for my last game jam! Looking forward to see your take on it!

Hello all you happy fellow game devs!

So it has begun! I'm making a game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates in vanilla JavaScript. I chose JavaScript because there is no compile time, and I can immediately see the changes I made to the game on screen. 

What are you making and what tools are you using, and why?

Thank you!

Thank you! Nice video and great beard!

Really cool and clever game!

Vanilla Javascript.

I guess I made the final boss a bit too difficult to beat! I might remove some of his henchmen in  a future update. Thank you for the comment!

Super small update to the game! Thank you all for your feedback! Please feel free to offer more feedback!

GAME LINK: A Game of Jam

POST-MORTEM: A Game of Jam POST-MORTEM

Thank you for your feedback!

I agree, I should change the diagonal movement speed. I will do that! Thank you for pointing that out! I completely missed that!

As for the black screen, it seems like the game is incompatible with Firefox (and probably IE too). I know what the issue is, but I don't have enough time to fix it at the moment.

That's very strange. It's supposed to work on all aspect ratios. What browser and browser version are you using?

Oh, that's odd! I might look into it a little bit. Thank you!

Just wanted to let you know that the link doesn't work.

I must say that the graphics, sound, and music really work well together. The atmosphere is spellbinding!

Thank you for your feedback!

The attack animation is not supposed to be suggestive, but now that you've mentioned it, I cannot unsee it!

I think I will speed up the hero and give him a bigger hit box in a future update.

As for the evil Lord Evil, he has seven hit points that regenerate every time you die. And yes, he kills you with one shot. Considering that all other enemies in the game die from one hit, giving Lord Evil so many hit points might have been a mistake. 

I really appreciate your input! Thank you once again!

Thank you for your feedback! I really appreciate it!

It sounds strange that you're not able to attack while moving diagonally. May I ask you what browser you are using?

As for the player's attack, it's one pixel (supposedly) at the point of the sword. I might have made some miscalculations though...

Thank you for playing, and maybe there will be a sequel some day.  Game of Jam II: The return of Lord Evil...

Thanks for your great feedback! Actually, when you mention it, I think the movement is a bit slow too! :D I might fix that in an update.

I've had a lot of fun over the past two weeks creating A Game of Jam and the engine behind it. Here are my thoughts on what went right, and what went wrong.

Why did I join this jam?

I wanted to push myself to create a complete game and game engine in less than two weeks.

What went right?

I managed to reach my goal. The whole process of making the game with such a time constraint was a great challenge, and helped me focus on creating a complete game without getting too stuck on details. I learned a lot and got a more holistic view of the creative process, and really feel like I want to continue making games (or game engines). Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you would like to collaborate on some project in the future!

What went wrong?

I’d say that everything that went wrong went right, since the whole purpose of this jam was to learn. So without further ado…

Here are the things I learned:

1. Draw a road map — knowing how to get to where you are heading is important. I started out ‘knowing’ what I wanted, but not how to get there. As time passed by, I realized that I had to set obtainable goals. I ended up having a set of goals for each day, and luckily I managed to complete them all on time!
2. Plan your code ahead / Structure your code — I guess this goes without saying, but it is so easy to end up with spaghetti code. I don’t know how many hours I spent on refactoring my code, just to refactor it again the following day (and the end result still looks pretty much like over-boiled spaghetti). My function calls look horrible, some of them have 6–7 variables passed to them! Sometimes it got so confusing that I didn’t even know what the variables were used for, and sometimes I passed the same variable twice! This was my greatest problem during this jam. Much of this stems from that I was making everything up as I was coding. If I would have spent some time on structuring the code better, and having planned more ahead, this could have been avoided to some extent.
3. Use variables from the start — I hard-coded a lot of values in the beginning, and changing those values to variables can be troublesome. You might miss one variable, which could make your whole game buggy. For instance, I hard-coded the tile size in the beginning, and missed to replace the values at some place, which lead to problems when resizing the screen, as well as problems with collision detection. So at the end of the day, not using variables from the beginning cost me extra time.
4. Get a team — Working completely solo is fun, but you don't get any feedback on what you are doing, and you have to spend time on things you might not want to do. If I would have worked with a pixel artist, I could have made my game isometric. The code is not that much different, but I would have had to make at least 8 different sprites for each monster (not including animations). Also, I didn't want to spend time finding the right music, and I spent approximately 5 minutes making the sound effects. With that being said, working solo has one great benefit. You get to experience every part of the development process. Which at times is overwhelming.

I hope you had as much fun as I did during these two weeks!

/ nilkun

Say hello to me on Discord: nilkun

or Twitter: @nilkun

Link to the game: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-summer-2019/rate/446596

Game Title/URL:  A Game of Jam

Pitch/Information: A Game of Jam is an action-adventure game. The once peaceful country of Jamia has been been conquered by the evil Lord Evil. You are Jamia's last hope. Will you be able to find the seven sacred jars of jam, and defeat the evil Lord Evil before he does something even more evil? Will you be able to restore a peace that will last until the release of the sequel?

I'd like feedback on: Anything, but specifically looking for feedback on the game engine. I would like to know about erratic or strange behavior. I would also like to know if the player is moving too fast / too slow, or the monsters are moving too fast / too slow. If the monsters are too difficult or too easy to hit. Is there anything that is difficult to understand about the game? What are the best / worst parts?

I love the ambiance! Great pastime. DLC a bit overpriced though... ;)

It looks really nice! I love the flower tossing! It's a very nice concept.

And the game is finally completed!!! It is playable and beatable. I hope it is enjoyable despite being very short. 

I built the whole engine for this project during the jam, and it is quite messy. There  is just one minor bug as far as I know, which has to do with wall collision in specific cases. I might fix that in a future update.

This is what I did today:

• The main antagonist was added
• Projectiles were added
• Jam is collectable
• Sound effects were recorded and added
• Level design was slightly polished
• Death animations
• Endgame

HERE'S THE LINK: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-summer-2019/rate/446596

Map editor is completed. Still only one kind of monsters. They don't look too good on a green background...

Monsters and objects can now be added to the map. Unfortunately, there aren't too many monsters or objects to add at this moment.

The only thing left to add to the map editor is the ability to create paths for the monsters. I also need to make the objects interactive. I will probably work on that tomorrow. After that, I'll work on adding more monsters.

Today was mostly cleanup and adding text and stats to the game. All the screens ( start, pause, game over, win) are completed, and health is now shown.

Did some work on the map editor yesterday. I can now edit the whole game world, although I can't add objects or monsters yet. This is probably the map I will use for this game jam. I know, it's only nine screens!

So today didn't feel very productive, I just added a lot of boring stuff, such as the ability to pause the game and resize the screen. The map editor can be used to save and load maps now. Furthermore, our hero can now move on to the next screen! His world just doubled in size!

At just about halftime, I've finally come up with a roadmap! Here it goes: 

1. Make the map creator into a full blown world creator. (Currently, I can only change the tiles on one screen, and I can't add monsters)
2. Make a stats box, showing the player's health.
3. Let the player pick up objects. (The point of the game is to collect jam jars).
4. Make a welcome screen, pause screen, game over screen, and game completion screen.
5. By this time, all the game mechanics are basically implemented, and the game can be completed. Everything after this is extra credits.
6. More monster mechanics. (I have the concept for at least three more enemies)
7. Create the final boss.
8. Polishing.
9. More polishing.

I will feel confident once I reach point five. After that, all I need is creativity. I have nothing cool to show so here is a screenshot of my map editor.

I love your artwork! The cat monster looks terrifying! Keep the ears!

Time to call it a day. 

Pathfinding is completed, and the map editor is making progress. Screenshot from map editor. This map will probably not make it into the game.

One more update today. I did some major refactoring, and managed to make the game more scaleable. Anyhow, It's way past bedtime now, so I'm signing off.

Tomorrow, I might implement some pathfinding and gameworld mechanics.

.

Evil trolls attacking the player. Player acting in self defense.

I've overhauled the monster class and implemented several new features and bugs.

• The monsters can have an animated(!) death
• It's no longer possible to just step right over the monsters without consequences
• The player can die
• There is a very simple FSM at play
• Code looks like spaghetti

The monsters are quite dumb at the moment, and can't use weapons. That is the assignment for tomorrow. Monsters that shoot back at the player.

If I get some extra time, I will upload a gameplay video later on today.

I've set two subgoals before moving on to the next step. 

Goal 1: Finish the monster class. Make it reusable.

Goal 2: Create a map editor.

Hopefully both will be completed by tomorrow.

Monster slaying is now an option.

About the game

A Game of Jam is an action-adventure game where you play as an unnamed hero who has to defeat the evil Lord Evil.

Plot

The once peaceful country of Jamia has been been conquered by the evil Lord Evil. You are Jamia's last hope. Will you be able to find the seven sacred jars of jam, and defeat the evil Lord Evil before he does something even more evil? Will you be able to restore a peace that will last until the release of the sequel?

MONSTERS

• Trolls are slow and dumb. But don't let that fool you! They don't like it when you get too close to them.
• Bouncers are quite harmless as long as you leave them alone. Don't attack them!!!

Development and team

The game is written in vanilla JavaScript, and there is only one of us. 

GAME LINK: A Game of Jam

Hello there!

Originally from Sweden but now living in Japan. I'm a big Civilization fan, although I haven't had time to play the latest installment yet (I wish there were more than 24 hours a day). I also love the X-COM series!

This is my first game jam ever. I joined this game jam in order to challenge myself to create a game engine for JavaScript. My goal is to have a working, scalable game at the end of the jam.