Humble Beginnings...

At the start of this jam... I struggled a bit coming up with some decent ideas I felt excited to work on TBH. I knew I wanted something small in scope. But the ideas weren't flowing as I would've liked on Friday night into Saturday morning...

Then I hopped on Pinterest to find some reference for a few ideas... and came across some images of the cutest food 'creatures'. I loved it. I mean... look at this stuff! It's TOO adorable! :openmouth: :hearteyes:

That springboarded the idea of controlling these little 'Bobas' in some Boba Tea... trying to avoid getting sucked up in a straw? I thought it had a nice simple element to it, could be fun, and had a bit of surprise. So as with most things Ludum... had to just go for it, as I had already eaten too much time coming up with an idea. :grimacing: :stuckouttongueclosedeyes:

Mistakes were made...

I had just come across this really neat lattice tool for Unity by Harry Heath... it allows you to create, animate and manipulate lattices in-engine.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/lattice-modifier-for-unity-293850

It looks amazing, and doing the jam, thought this might be a fun idea to mess with it. (I promise this post is not an ad for that tool :wink: :stuckouttongueclosedeyes: ) But definitely worth checking out if you get the chance!

So I went the 3D route... (even tho most jams I do pixel art as it's just a faster workflow for me overall and I enjoy it).

I had to just try it, and it looked really promising, so I got a prototype mocked up as fast as I could to prove it out. Then when I went to make my build, I had all kinds of issues getting a webgl build to work without crashing, and various shader errors etc. I just didn't have the experience/knowledge to figure it out in that time.

I love learning new things during LD... it's one thing I love about doing this jam, but maybe learning a totally new workflow is a bit much in that time. :grimacing:

Time to panic and redirect...

With a whole day down... I had to pivot. And just focus on what I knew. The process became fun again. This had a lot of opportunity for juicy bits and fun character animation. I'd love to continue exploring some of that polish post-jam. I wish I had more time to add further levels and better progression etc too. But it was still a fun experience and I learned a lot!

My fav part may have been making slurpy noises at my desk. :joy:

Feel free to check it out here when you have a moment! :smile:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/boba-teeny

Been playing some amazing games this jam. :raised_hands: Cheers.