Making a 72 Hour Game Together

I teamed up with Noah from Blackthorne croc to make a game in 72 hours for Ludum dare a let's crush this let's cross this yes lens firm 8 is it like really interesting maybe I'm not sure problems and counters and bad news for you to start the day brain cells lost a new lessons were learned I've really tried to keep it as easy as possible and then I was already confused that you were like Ludum there's one of the biggest online events where people make games together the topic this time keep it alive so keep it alive what could that mean the if it was probably the best clue or the most interesting part I feel like in that entire thing interesting yeah I guess keep it's cuz it's like tell me if you think like it's a creature or like some some plants or something not like over the human it Saturday morning 8 a.m. we

started talking about some first ideas for our game the clock was ticking so we tried not to waste too much time over scoping has always been a bit of an issue in my Game Jam project so this time I wanted to try something different keeping an extremely simple and finishing early what would be cool about this idea is that would be pretty scalable to start like with one trap and one kind of enemy and it would be a pretty pretty damn small game yeah a really handy awright history and keep in mind that two three our prototype idea we start the bouncing some ideas back and forth luckily no I was totally in on the idea of making something small as well I'm pretty insane ideas came up like a crazy dragon that shoots bouncy fireballs and you need to stop him from hitting himself you know that I was also thinking of like yeah give up there's like one little character okay but you control the environment all around them and you just goes to make sure the character doesn't somehow manage to kill himself or doesn't die oh yeah it's definitely very very scalable like we start with something very simple and then grow it from from there exactly there's tons of different environmental

things that we could add like from little creatures or moving traps that yes lots of things to scale it with just like that we had an idea we could start working on my job was to work on the code side of things while Noah's started making some art for the game she went for such a small idea we really managed to get it up and running very very quickly oh no I can't release it oh really he said after a bit of [ __ ] fixing the very soon was some fun to be had man and okay working nicely oh yes I can drag-and-drop the crates cool yes nice last time the two of us made a game together people complained that the camera made them feel this and I'm sick no coincidence I don't think so the truth is I'm just a

bit disappointed in myself that I made the same mistake twice hey I'm looking for someone to blame there's a matter of fact we both didn't really notice that the camera was a bit Shia I was too busy implementing the victory and the defeat screen noir was too busy making art for all we knew things were going pretty well okay wow this is two and a half hours in at the moment next time I try to make a platform you can rotate with your mouse which turned out to be more difficult than I thought just like everything having to do with rotations works fine here somehow something was always a bit off so I eventually decided to go for a different approach as I already had working boxes you could drag around I decided to just stitch two of them together to make for a rotating platform a cool approach that did not hold up very well no cheating didn't work back to coding it was and luckily I managed to make it work hello Lou sorry I've missed your call oh no Paula I just wanted to make sure that you and with that I'm gonna do another collab oh my god we even have a

occurs on now yes with a cursor the glove scientists love so piece by piece everything was starting to come together my next task was to make the character a bit more wobbly and slimy the way you can imagine this works is by attaching a couple of or circles or main circle and then connecting them with Springs that's more or less what it is so like what is the plan you think we just continue like adding individual pieces like you new enemies new pieces of the environment stuff or should we start like trying to create like actually really good levels I feel like we should try to create a Minimum Viable Product so that at the end of the day we have something that this finish that we okay the finish game yeah I got the enemies happened running no I added some sound we sketched out the first two levels together and started building them in unity things are going well we didn't suspect anything yet cool okay we have a level one I think this levels is really good for for the introduction yeah I think as well excellent

well I'll try and make this level nicer looking that will be I think the final my final job today when when should we start tomorrow I think four in the morning conclude day one we even stopped at a very humane time or still bright outside well at night something happened I have bad news for you what is it don't tell me it's about the game jam oh I'm sorry Lord deep unfortunately jonna's and noah made very good progress today we cannot allow that execute Plan C good morning Jonas good morning I guess I'm bad news for you to start the

day it should be quite small cubicles small but for some reason I can't collab my the changes I did to the project yesterday we used unity collab to keep the project and sync so that whenever one of us made a change to the game the other one got it as well and for some reason that system was now broken again error message saying collab published fails your storage quota has exceeded the limits managed storage in your organization's unity web dashboard and you guessed it for example reason that was not that easy to fix or maybe we were just too dumb that could totally be the case we tried clearing storage we tried reinforcing everything into a new project nothing worked so we became desperate for solutions what was the plan B I mean yeah it has to be good but that's it that's pretty much the same thing as you need to collab just in a slightly more confusing way the shoe is a brutal way to start day 2 I read a

little white-clad this work I mean and of course it came as a tattoo we switch to get kids what are you doing to us No our brains were not big enough to make that work either being having the same thing and before you see my screen yep you see like all these like 981 changed files I've got like 24 conflicts and do you have the new get ignore file I do actually wait a second we have collabed with this projects don't we maybe I could just try clapping yes but I think I've already disabled to collab it's ok maybe I can start again yeah I mean I guess you can try what this is thankful man this morning is being catastrophe oh this is game dev as its worst is get not

working oh man so where are you in the party if I collab will you actually see anything No so I need to invite you over no I don't wanna start with unit circle ever again no okay wait so Johnny you hear this is clapping so easy to kill huh huh she's like that is the story of how we went from unity collab to github to unity collab why did that resolve the issue there's only one logical explanation I'm trying to be a friend impossible oh man it's so you're importing the things then things like it yeah there we go

oh man this is gonna work this is going to work this morning we wasted a whole morning on this show that was four hours completely down the drain luckily the rest of the day was quite productive I added some more sound effects and now I implemented some nice graphics for the first two levels we're finally back into coding hell yeah I started adding a bit of Polish like that fleshing outline when you grab an object oh this restart prompt that shows up when you get started it's unparticle for when you win a level some of the things that were definitely a bit unnecessary like making the blob look at the mouse cursor I wish I had spent that time on improving the camera movement or something like that time is a very precious resource during game jam so you really have to prioritize correctly if you want to get the most out of your game flex don't make this cute little opening sequence explaining how X Karloff's these little blobs and wants

to teach them how to survive in the great expensive build Ernest I thought it might be cool to have a little bit of playable lore as well instead of seeing everything in a cutscene so I prototype the level for the end of the game where you release the blob into the wilderness you put it into a box you've wrapped the box the camera zooms out you carry the blob over a little river and eventually release it into a cave game gem games in general definitely have a tendency to end a bit abruptly because the developers didn't get around to finishing it so I think worrying about the end of the early is definitely a good idea in game jam pretty glad we handled it like this I've just implemented the transition from the cutscene to the next level of butt bar and then it fits right to the next level which feels so nice so by the end of day 2 we already had a fully playable game with music with sounds with plenty of polish yes it had only 2 levels but considering everything that had happened at the beginning of the day we were definitely happy earlier solitaire [Music] 18 hours left let's go no let's see if

he's already there I think so good morning Jonas good morning so I think we should make nice solid plan for how we can complete the game with our remaining hours on Monday our teamwork was quite on point I made some new levels no I made some art for the new levels and I have to say I'm really surprised by how quickly Noah managed to bring these levels to life this is essentially what no I got from me every time I made a new level then edit some grass which looks like this some nice little trees some clouds in the background and then last but not least some slight gradients in the foreground but I find really baffling about this is how simple the sprites are like these are all the sprites now I use for the steps I just described somehow the way Noah arranges the mana levels seems to make all the different especially the slight gradient and the foreground are a super interesting idea in my opinion after the gem I tried this technique for my own game will you snail and I really like how it looks I'll definitely have to experiment with this a bit more even after my first 10-minute experiment this already looks super promising so thank you very much Noah really seems like I've learned something useful from you this time at this point a quick reminder

to wishlist the game on Steam now the link is in the description because that is by far the best way not to miss the launch when the game finally comes out and kind of revenue of football fights have you ever asked yourself why you're here this is your chance to slap that wishlist buttons lepers time is running out yes exactly the yeah level looks nice I like the scientist looks very cool very nice Oh he even has on animation all that's so cute so yeah it's pretty it's been a good day I think that really definitely nice atmosphere to end the game nice and smooth after the levels you made a pretty like that wheel the wheels really cool the other one yeah is too hard it was yeah I think yeah the whole vibe of the game is pretty chill and relaxed we want like your players to starting to complete the game because it's gonna be short so yeah it's easy it's like really easy I think that's better than it's quite challenging so we really try to make an

easy game but I say that while showing footage of me building one of the hardest levels in the game the fact that I couldn't even get the blow up into the cave myself should have probably be higher at flaca so every unfortunately we were a bit too much in our development bubble to notice these issues lesson learned for next time let somebody play the game before you upload it even in a game jam that external feedback could have been so useful like once I saw my sister play the game after the gem all those problems became abundantly clear at that point it was just you know too late so your sister found to give a little hard I really tried to keep it as easy as possible and then I was already confused that you were like I know I know so this is how we thought people would play the game you know I just wanted it to be a nice relaxing journey helping the blobs to reach the sunflower and helping players to reach their inner center with some slow and

careful mouse motions playing like this even the toughest challenges felt like they were nothing you could accomplish anything turns out most players played the game a bit differently though [Music] let people test your game I think I got it we've completed this project this is my 6th let him do that your 6th one already well I think I mean it's like the 4th or something like that yeah the 4th ha ha ha so why the game didn't turn out perfect I'm still very very happy with the result excess blobs feels like a very round and finished experience which to

be honest is more than you can say about most game gem games yes it's a bit hard it's a bit glitchy the camera is a bit slow at lessons the lunch and I'm sure we'll do an even better job next time as always know us are turned out absolutely amazing it was a pleasure to work with them again yeah be making a video call you tomorrow actually I'll yeah it's morally working the video so be working - and fire no especially about the game Jones already out by now so if you want to hear the story from his point of view go check that out I linked his video in the endcard and in the description yeah let's let's record one more crazy scream then my eyes are bloodshot I can pay like oh yeah yeah like a warm bath shift taking a nice warm bath that's my [ __ ]

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