"Buggin Out" Development Log

https://itch.io/jam/3to1-studios-fall/rate/1741971

This week, we were given the prompt "Fall" to develop a small game in a short time. After hearing a series of pitches, I found a simple, endless, first-person platformer about a grasshopper to be interesting.

I developed a series of basic movement options available to the grasshopper, however they seemed to be to be overpowered, so I conferred with the other designer and we developed a system that incorporated rogue lite elements where the player would be able to buy certain moves as they progress in one run.

I provided basic summaries of the abilities up top then I created a more detailed table below depicting them.

I also developed an achievements system to incentivize the player to play multiple runs.

I worked with the other designer to develop the sound effects in the game, and after recording them, I edited them to smaller, usable clips for the game.

I created UI and UX drafts for the main game screen and forwarded them to the artists for development.

We have had to omit some of the design aspects such as the achievements in order to meet our deadline, so I am making the incremental difficulty more severe after around 2 minutes to emphasize the high-scoring goals of the game over the now deemphasized rogue lite elements.

The game ended up pretty bare-bone, and many of the initial design ideas were scrapped. Next jam I need to be more involved in setting deadlines for my team and ensuring that we have a proper game build sooner. I don't think people found the wiki format too helpful, and many people preferred direction through verbal communication than reading the design documents. We were largely a victim of circumstance when one of our two programmers got sick, however we designers needed to be more involved in-engine instead of leaving the load entirely on the programmers. Going forward, I am going to learn the engine more fully so that I can alleviate some load from any smaller programming teams I work with.