My first game jam was a big mix of excitement, nerves,and a healthy dose of panic. Over the past few weeks, I’ve run through the whole game making process for the first time, learning new things along the way.In the end, I ended up with Echoes of Insanity, a spooky 2D RPG style game where the player must explore an alter-world, all while solving tuning puzzles and avoiding monsters. From here on, I’ll dive more into the whole process, and what I went through.
Concept and Inspiration
After a lot of brainstorming, and searching my steam library, I remembered one of my favourite, and not too complex, horror games 殺戮の天使（さつりくのてんし）or, as it’s known in English, Angels of Death. This is where I got the 2d RPG style idea from; it seemed like the easiest to do in this time frame, plus I’ve worked with tile maps and stuff before. Now that I had the format prepared, I needed to figure out the main mechanic, something to help us stand out. In the end, I went with a tuning mechanic, with an alter world to explore, and puzzles to do. I mostly got this idea from my tile set, which as luck would have it, had a creepy and regular version together. This gave me the idea of two worlds, and it just kind of went from there.
Development Progress
The development process was really rocky at the start, but smoothed out towards the end. There were various challenges, such as making UI, dealing with efficient scene switching, various mechanics, and handling sound. Here are a few of the major milestones.
Finding Assets
This took a considerable amount of time and a lot of frustration. I can’t do my own art or sound stuff, so I had to search various asset stores and websites, trying to find assets that not only fit the theme, but also worked well with each other. In the end, I ended up with a pretty nice tile pack, an outlining asset pack, and various free sound assets.
Basic systems
Next was relatively routine and smooth, but no less important, the main systems. These include movement, interaction, camera setup, all the basics. There were no real problems here, though I did have a few camera issues initially since my camera somehow ended up with a strange z-axis. I spent a while trying to figure that out, but it was an easy fix once it was found.
Making the Maps
Making the maps was relatively simple, but still a lengthy process. Most people start with planning, but my thought process is more free; I start with one room, the entrance, and I think to myself, “now where would this connect? What room does this lead to?”, and I keep doing that, room by room, until it feels complete. Since I chose a school setting, there were a lot of scenes to work on, I think it was over 50 in the end, so there was a lot of time spent mapping them out, creating collisions, and populating them with objects to interact with.
Sound
Here was my weakest point, sound. I have actually never done sound of any kind in Unity, or anywhere, really, since I’ve never made anything release ready before. I was so new to sound, in fact, that I had to start from reading the documentation and searching YouTube. After a while, I kind of got the hang of it, though I feel my sound integration is pretty basic still. I made a script to control the BGM for the regular and alter-world, played with volume, and handled various effects on interactions.
Lessons learned
I learned a lot here, first of all, I learned deadlines were really stressful. But really, I learned more about polishing and actually finishing stuff. I’ve always sort of lost interest in projects after a while since I never thought anyone would see them anyway, but for this one, I had to go through to the end. It was a great experience, and it was the support of my friends that really pushed me to continue. I also, learned practical skills, of course, such as finally being able to add sound, how to add post processing effects, and how to make particle systems. Overall, I’m happy I had the opportunity too participate.
What’s next?
So, the big question, What’s next? From here, I think I’ll work a bit more on other projects, and be on the lookout for more game jams that seem interesting. At this point, I can only really make 2D RPG style games, so I might try branching out a bit with other game jams and personal projects.