So I just completed my first Unity game.

I'm currently working on SPIRIT, which is a much larger project, but I decided to take part in the GMTK2025 game jam this year and make a game from scratch. The theme this year is LOOP, so the idea I landed on after a brainstorming session was a shoot-em-up where instead of progressing from level to level, you flew the same level over and over again until you had destroyed all the primary targets of that level. Instead of picking up powerups and replenishing your health between levels, you'd get a small amount of credits between runs that you had to distribute between upgrades, special weapons, and much-needed repairs. I also planned for at least one randomized asteroid field sequence, to keep the player on their toes even though they were playing through the same level. The idea was it'd be an fast-paced and unforgiving shooter where you had to explore and really get to know the level to beat it and where you had to keep making tough decisions on how to spend your credits. I even decided at some point that the whole game was the two characters 😊🐺 in my previous GMTK entry 'Alvin, the Wolf, and the Horrible Hurrofs' playing make-believe, so I intended to add dialogue to reflect that, with the two narrating the action and of course constantly bickering.

As so often happens in game jams, there wasn't enough time to do all the things I wanted to do. I wanted more enemy types and both respawning enemies and harder primary targets and of course proper level design. As it is, this is of course a prototype more than anything, but I'll be sure to return to it after I've rested and recovered after three hectic days of making a game from scratch. All the things listed above are things I genuinely still want to add to the game, and once I squish the last bugs, I can get to work making enemies and levels, which is of course the fun part that I thought there would be more time for during the jam. I spent a lot of time trouble-shooting things that didn't work, and to add insult to injury, a lot of things of course suddenly broke in the final hour or so before upload.

If you want something fun to play for five minutes, though, give it a whirl. Give it a rating over at the GMTK page, too, I'd love that. Oh, and if you think this prototype is promising, watch this space --I'll be sure to come back to this and add all the features I talked about above.

Gotta celebrate and then rest first, though. It's been three intense days🥱.

3xR Raid Rinse Repeat Postmortem

Okay. Second game jam over, first where I used an ‘serious’ game engine and not just RPG Maker.

My first foray into GMTK was a role-playing game called Alvin, the Wolf, and the Horrible Huroffs, a kind of fusion between Lost Vikings and Calvin and Hobbes, where you switched between a boy and his wolf, who ran like the wind, easily jumped streams and ponds, and ate menacing monsters for breakfast, but turned into a plush when near people. The boy, in turn, could get through through tiny gaps too small for the burly wolf, talk to other people, and rescue his wolf best friend when it was trapped in plush form.

The game performed really well, perhaps especially for an RPG Maker game. Not too many people played it, but those who did seemed to truly enjoy it. When I checked on it today and saw that someome had added it to a collection they had called Extraordinary Games, I was really, really touched❤️.

So naturally, I counted on this year’s game to do even better. Especially since I was a 'real' game engine, and I could upload it so that people could play it directly in their browser. ...Well. Insert ‘How it started/how it’s going meme’ here. As of today, a few days after the deadline, 3xR --Raid Rinse Repeat has been downloaded a grand total of… Five times.

So, let’s recap. What went right⭐?

I finished my first Unity game. Regardless of ratings, views, download counts, or anything else, this is a personal huge milestone and making 3xR was also incredibly fun. It’s a decent prototype that has the complete gameplay loop of playing the level, stopping by the shop for upgrades, rearming, and repairs, and then hitting the level again, until you've destroy all the enemies. I’ve been complimented on it being a good first try, and I’m proud of myself for getting it out there. I even dare say that even though it’s a simple, and pretty buggy, prototype, it’s still surprisingly fun to play. It’s fast-paced, has a few challenging parts, and I think the juxtaposition of my own hurriedly drawn MS Paint art next to asteroids and spacecraft from the Unity asset store is both quirky and hilarious. It’s a solid foundation to build on, and I already have several features and changes planned. I also felt I did pretty well on time management. I didn’t overextend myself, and I dropped or scaled down features that didn’t work when I realized I was spending too long trying to fix them. I submitted a working prototype of 3xR Raid Rinse Repeat with plenty of time to spare. By the way, I really like that name, too.

Also, I’m pleased with myself for my work on presentation after the upload. Fortunately, you can still edit your game page after the deadline, so I could dedicate myself to showcasing my game as well as I could. I put effort into making the game page look as good as possible and even made a six-second teaser trailer showing the gameplay loop which I think turned out pretty cool. There might be games this year with far better ideas and production quality, but do they have trailers? No, baby, that’s pretty much just me😏.

Sooo… What went less well?

Actually, not much. Overall, the things that went wrong were just the things that go wrong in every game jam. You don’t have much time, and all sorts of things refuse to work or suddenly stop working, sometimes right before deadline. I had lots of things planned for the game, but probably more than half the time went to troubleshooting things that refused to work. I thought I just had to quickly make the systems and then I’d have plenty time for level design, which is of course the fun part. Instead, I had to throw out or scale back a lot of features just to make a playable prototype, and to add insult to injury, I managed to break the pretty fun level I had built for the game and so had to cobble together something that felt a lot more ‘random’ and far less enjoyable at the last second😤.

Also, the WebGL build. I’ve basically never made a working build of a Unity game before and the WebGL build came out broken. After some attempts to fix it, with the deadline approaching fast, I had to resort to trying to build a Windows build instead. That too came with some problems that needed sorting and introduced bugs of its own (such as the missile counter showing an overflowing ‘Missiles: 0’ string instead of just ‘0’ like it did when playing the game in Unity), but at least I got it done.

What did I learn?

⌛Start earlier. I had decided to participate in the jam and was looking forward to it but spent too long just mulling over the theme and deciding what to make. I could’ve probably decided on what kind of game to make much earlier, and I would’ve had more time to actually design. I seem to recall I was kind of intimidated by using Unity, but I still should’ve started earlier.

🐑🥧I also could’ve probably eaten and slept better.

🛠️I also had no idea that putting together a playable build of a Unity project could involve so many hurdles. Next time I’ll practice that and read up on possible problems and solutions before the game jam.

💾 Oh, and I should've made regular backups of the project like I told myself to.

Either way: I had lots of fun making this and will definitely be back back next year. 3xR Raid Rinse Repeat is playable here after a quick download!

Post-jam roadmap

Okay, so here's a quick post on how I intend for this game to evolve now that the jam is over. I know writing a post like this is risky, because I'm promising another update and for all I know I'll lose interest or suddenly not have the spare time, but I wanted to get down on paper what I plan for this game. Maybe this will help me commit to keep working on the game.

Changes I've already made:

• You now earn additional credits from destroying enemy ships, added to the fixed sum you're allotted every time you reach the shop
• Added left mouse button as additional hotkey for firing cannons and missiles, and the Control keys as additional keys for firing cannons
• Locked camera to player ship. This did a lot for the feel of the game
• Tweaked zoom level
• Started tweaking numbers like shop credits and enemy health (this will be a continuous process)

Here are the things I want to work on in the short term:

• Sound effects and music
• More content --upgrades, weapons, enemy types, things to fly past other than just asteroids, and so on
• A proper level, not one that's cobbled together last minute for a game jam
  • Sections of the level with randomized asteroid fields, to keep the player on their toes every run!
• Bug fixing. Sooo much bug fixing.

I would love it if I can release a kind of 1.0 version with all these features, and perhaps even a 1.1 with general polish, fixes, and changes based on whatever feedback I might receive.

Thanks for the jam, and a big thanks to all who played and commented on my game, it means the world!