This weekly blog post is really doing something for my observance of the passage of time. It feels like it's been way more than a week since the last one, but no. It's been…one week.
I'm I guess more than halfway through the Bigmode Game Jam and I'm TECHNICALLY done, in the sense that I have submitted my submission! It's not done yet, but the mechanics are there. Want to hear about it?
I mentioned last week that my plan was to make a walking around type of game. That changed a little when the jam started and it was revealed that the theme is "Slick." Walking around and softly meeting some strange and charming and heartbreaking characters can be described in a lot of ways, but "slick" is not necessarily one of them, so I had to pivot a little. I started thinking about the slickest kind of way of walking around there is and imagined Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka skipping up and down those stairs. What kind of game mechanic could I introduce that would force the player to walk backwards and look cool doing it? Maybe a puzzle game where certain doors only open if you're looking at something over there.
I played through a lot of possible ideas in my imagination over the first few days, but it wasn't until yesterday or the day before that I felt like I really figured it out. It's a rhythm game, and you're moving in different directions at different parts of a looping music track, almost like line dancing. I spent way too much of the jam getting to this point, but I am pretty happy with where it's landed. I'll spend the last couple days getting the ~content~ in place, replace my scratch music tracks with something that is fun to listen to and progresses interestingly, with a more detailed map that suggests a little bit of a story and justifies the name Loose Leaf, which I decided on before I started planning anything just because I thought it sounded nice.
That's been my week basically! I am DJing on Saturday, which you might recall me talking about last week. I've been collecting lots of new music to play, and I bought a Bluetooth numpad today so that I can plug my phone into the mixer and trigger sounds on in. That could be a disaster or something I just don't get to, but it might be a fun extra little bit of whatever. As predicted, I haven't touched Melodics since last week, so I gotta get my finger drumming in somewhere.
See you next week, unless I see you at Gin Rummy in Venice on Saturday night from 10pm to 2am! Haha!