Here we Go Again

So I’m taking a bit of a break from the Letterbox to do the EpicMegaJam. In the past I have done Global Game Jam 1 and 2, a board game jam I hosted at my college, and a couple of jams in the early days of Unknown Worlds. But its been probably 10 years since I’ve done one at all, so now that I am a solo dev, now seems like a perfect time to start again!

This theme is “Here we go again” and my first thought was a games like Hotline Miami and Super Meat Boy, where you die quickly and often trying to figure out the right sequence of events to make it through the level. My take is going with a classic grid based dungeon crawl where you have to map out this dungeon filled with deadly traps. Fortunately (or unfortunately) every time you die you respawn at the start with all traps reset. So you're going to need some graph paper (like the olden days or yore) to map out the safe path through the dungeon.

I spent most of Day 1 getting my project started, listening to the livestream, doing some IRL parenting, and locking down the above idea. Today I put together blueprints for each room type, trigger, and trap type I have for starters and laid out a test level.

Snapshot of my test level

Next I probably want to add the death and respawn mechanics as well as a main menu and a victory screen. Then I’d just need to: design and layout the main level; update the room and trap art; adjust level lighting and add fx; update character mesh; voiceovers for death and “here we go again” at the start 20 times; add other sounds, music, vfx and the many other things I forgot about. Easy :-D


Maybe next time I’ll join a team D-: