This wasn’t my first attempt at a LD, but was the first one in which I managed to complete a game. It was, indeed, a very enlightening experience (and still is) and I wanted to share some of the things I learned along the way.

In the The P.U.R.G.E. Protocol, you wake up in a room of some ship, flying in space towards an (almost) unknown destination. There’s a holo-computer at the center of the room requesting you to “start” something, and then the questions begin. The game is mostly a quiz game, but I also added some sort of story to give it more sense and adapt it to the theme, of course.

What went right

I finished the game

I know, this is obvious, but to me this represented a huge achievement. I usually get the ideas for games when there’s not enough time to implement them or they are too big for a jam (or both). This time, though, I had an idea that I liked in time and I managed to keep the scope at a reasonable length to make it doable.

I use my own engine

Another important achievement. I’ve been working on Crimild, my own engine, for several years. Although it's designed mostly as a learning tool, it has been used for production-level projects before. But to be able to use it for a jam, making a [reasonable] stable game in just 48 hours was just amazing.

The idea

Before the theme was officially announced I knew I wanted to make a game resembling escape rooms in real life. I recently had the chance to participate in one here in Buenos Aires and it was a great experience. It’s a game that you play in just an hour, which makes it perfect for a short video game. With that in mind, I just needed to wait for the theme. And when the theme was live, the whole spaceship-IQ-test-escape-room made sense. Oh, and here’s my "design document”:

The art

Considering that I’m still learning how to do 3D art, I’m very pleased with the result. I went for a low poly technique, using references from space movies from the 60s, 70s and 80s (particularly, Alien and 2001). There are a lot of contrast with oranges/browns and blue. The holograms were created simply by using a translucent theme with a light at the center. I was aiming for adding textures and shader effects, but I liked the end result as it it feels like the double exposure techniques used in early films.

Cutting features

When the time was running out and I new I wouldn’t be able to complete all the features that I wanted to have in the game, I had to make a choice: include more things but let them unfinished or go with a more polished “product" but less diverse. I went for the second one and I still think it was the best idea. Sure, the game should have more diverse questions and maybe other elements, but it felt good in the end.

A reasonable schedule

Like many of you have suggested time and time again, sleeping and eating is a very important while making a game for a jam. And so I did. Once the theme was announced, I went to sleep thinking about how to use it for an escape room. The next morning, I went for a coffee and start drafting the idea. From then on, I worked at home, having breaks from time to time and I had a great time. And I managed to get together with my friends to watch Game of Thrones in time :)

THAT moment in the story

I don’t want to spoil the game for those of you who haven’t played it yet, but there’s a moment when things start to make (some) sense. I wasn’t sure if the players were going to like it and they did. My engine still don’t have a good support for real time shadows, but it work well enough for this game.

What went wrong

No audio

This was the biggest request from other players. There is no sound in the game. No FXs, no ambient music. From the very beginning, I had decided not to include sounds in order to concentrate in the game itself but, in the end, this proved to be a bad choice. Just a couple of sounds would have make the game a lot better.

Technical issues

I spend much more time fixing bugs and other problems than I would have wanted. Some of those bugs were caused by things that were not fully tested in my engine. Others, because I wasn’t paying enough attention. I wasted a good couple of hours trying to understand why I couldn’t t select objects in the game and I could have I use that time to work on more diverse puzzles. The engine needs more testing. Lesson learned.

Limited puzzles

Again, I made the call at some point during development. But the puzzles ended up a bit repetitive and some of them don’t fully respect the story and mood of the rest of the game.

The ending

There are two endings in the game, depending on how well you answer the questions. While the bad ending is ok, the other one is not good enough. Almost no one realized that, as the ship is getting repaired, the lights turn on in the room. Instead, it seems like there was a bug in the lights.

Where to go from here

Like I said, I’m very happy with the result. I have received a lot of feedback during the last couple of weeks and I intent to use that to polish the game as much as I can, once I have some free time. I’m going to add more story and gameplay mechanics. Probably release it an iOS version too.

If you haven’t already, you can play The P.U.R.G.E. Protocol here. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions.

Thanks everyone for playing and rating my game!

And special thanks to my Number 1 Fan, whose support was incredibly important ;)