itch.io Community » General » Release Announcements

GMTK - Rascal on the run / how it helped us as developers

A topic by From the end games created Sep 04, 2018 Views: 231

Viewing posts 1 to 1

Just read the bold for main points

For GMTK's genre minus mechanic jam(our 2nd ever jam), we made a run and gun platformer with a shield instead of a gun. Utilize a weighty jump to avoid and the shield to deflect projectiles. Deflected projectiles can be launched back at enemies clearing the path to victory in 24 short levels.

How this jam helped us as developers on our full time project:

The main way that doing game jams has helped us is by forcing us to lessen the scope. It's so fun and easy to let your imagination run wild, especially the more skilled you become. Each lesson you learn opening up new possibilities.

This jam in particular let us experiment with some different ways of implementing the jump into a platformer. The jump being the defining factor in most platformers, we were able to further our understanding of how jumping works in terms of code and design.

We also spent a lot of time working on a new more dynamic camera controller which we sadly weren't able to use in the end as we decided to go with a single screen per level. However, we now have the knowledge and experience to implement a better camera into our main project. We also learned how to implement a simple screen shake effect using unity's animation window!

Thank you if you read all or some of this! Please try out our game and offer some feedback. We'd love to do the same for you. And if you want to become a better developer you should definitely do game jams.