Where is Jeremy Wattson? by Dock Frankenstein
Description
A weird, story-rich puzzle game about Jeremy Wattson, where you pull out objects out of a hole, while trying not to block your path.
Controls
- WASD - walking
- E - interact/reel
- Q - interact/reverse reel
- `/~ - debug console
- F11 - fullscreen
Development
Tools used
- Engine: Stride3D
- IDE: Visual Studio
- UI Library: Myra
- Dialogue Engine: Ink
- Debugging: qASIC (for the cheat console)
Art
Most assets in the game have been hand-drawn on paper, scanned and put into the game. We also used an image from a random book we found in the trash for one level.
The reason the game is in 2.5D, is because we were both too stupid to use blender and Stride's 2D support isn't that great.
Animation
Because Stride lacks a built-in animator, we had to code procedural animations using random math that looked good.
If you want to take a closer look at the player animation, open the cheat console and run plalwaysanim true and dcam and move the camera closer.
Dialogue
For dialogue, we used ink which wasn't that difficult to get running in the engine. At startup, the game takes the .ink files from the data folder and compiles them into .json files that are easier to read. You can see the list of dialogues by opening up the debug console and running inkstories. To play a story, run playink [story name].
As for writing the dialogue, I cannot tell you how it materialized. I would just wake up and see written text appear on my computer.
| Link | https://github.com/DockFrankenstein/LD57 |
| Link | https://dock-frankenstein.itch.io/where-is-jeremy-wattson |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/where-is-jeremy-wattson |
Ratings
| Overall | 341th | 3.674⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 450th | 3.37⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 251th | 3.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 671th | 3.205⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 183th | 4.174⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 294th | 3.19⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 329th | 3.739⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
This was certainly a weird one. Nice puzzles, deep dialogues. I didn't get to be Jeremy Wattson, but at least I got an apple and a fish!
The puzzle mechanics felt really cool and novel, and the unique LITERAL hand-drawn art style was super cool to discover. Nice job on this one!
Some more challenging puzzles, like the last one would improve the game further.
It's nice that you put in different characters and that you could interact with them. The transition between levels was a cool effect. The theme is represented in the gameplay by getting stuff from the depths. Good implementation here. The overall style felt a little bit weird, but in a fun way. I liked it. :)
Only negative for me was the puzzles seemed a bit on the easy side, but since most others here said they were more on the challenging side, it seems you balanced them correctly!
Also, not about the game, I really appreciate you explaining your process for art, anims, and (especially) dialogue. Kinda makes me want to learn Stride3D (which I hadn't heard of before) and ink next jam, since ink has long been on my "to try" list.
On that note, if you don't mind me asking, was there an engine reason you didn't include audio, or was it just a timing thing?