My plan going in was some kind of retro point and click adventure game as that is generally what I make. However the theme really threw me off and I spent a bunch of hours noodling on stories and puzzles to make that work and I came up short. Nothing was really clicking, I considered just starting to build assets and hoping the game would come together later but everytime I've done that in the past I've failed the jam.

So I pivoted to something completely different. Instead I'm now making a "Coffee-break grand strategy space conquest game". Here's some placeholder art from my current WIP for the battle screen:

Goal of the game is to give you a chance to build up and command fleets to conquer the galaxy, and get it all done in under an hour.

Game has three main components: - Battle Screen - Been working on this all day today and it's about 70% done, but I'm starting to flag and I'm not sure I'll get the enemy AI finished before I wrap for the day. - Map Screen - Main focus for tomorrow will be the meta game of building the fleets and deploying them to planet, tracking changes as you and the AI conquer the galaxy. - Card System - For Monday I want to build on the rest of the game with some simple card game mechanics to add more interesting choices during the battle screen.

It's very losely based on a japanese fan board game of the book/anime series Legend of Galactic Heroes.

How does this all tie into the theme? I'm trying to build all the mechanics around tight limitations rather than the typically overwhelming size of grand strategy games... and it's set in space. Sure it's lose but it's enough for me.