{"author_link":"\/users\/misaravensoul","author_name":"MisaRavensoul","author_uid":"misaravensoul","comments":[],"epoch":1729126160,"event":"LD56","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":406164,"likes":9,"metadata":{"p_key":"209242","p_author":"MisaRavensoul","p_authorkey":"1218242","p_urlkey":"447617","p_title":"Behind the Scenes of Miku's Minion Madness: Before the Jam","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD56","p_time":"1729126160","p_likes":"9","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1218242","us_name":"MisaRavensoul","us_username":"misaravensoul","event_start":"1728000000","event_key":"115","event_name":"Ludum Dare 56"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD56","removed_author":false},"_superparent":395186,"_trust":1,"author":218242,"body":"Hi, Misa here, one of the developers on Miku's Minion Madness (https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/56\/mikus-minion-madness), and I wanted to talk about the making of the game! This one will be a bit long, so we'll split it into multiple posts. This one is the Before the Jam edition.\n\n**2 Days Before the Jam**\n\n@poco0317 and my fianc\u00e9e @miku had decided months before this point that we would participate, but with the looming weekend, no ideas, and all of us facing general exhaustion, we were just going to see where it would go. Maybe we\u2019d get a shell of a project out, or maybe we would just be one of the unfinished entries. We were ready to face any possibility. We had also recruited our friend @jason-woerner, who like myself and @miku, has extensive experience in the gaming industry. After thinking about it, Miku decided we simply couldn\u2019t waste the talents of this team!\n\nIt only took a moment for our team lead to go from \"Should we do this?\" to \"We should do this!\" Miku took point and in 30 minutes, wrote up a card rogue-like adventure. We decided to head into the weekend with this general plan, but otherwise we had no specific ideas until the theme would be revealed.\n\n**1 Day Before the Jam**\n\nWe were all feeling a bit of anxiety the day before - we had a solid base idea, although it was a pretty large scope, if we included everything we'd like to achieve. We decided to downscale it further after the theme came out. We knew we wanted some elements of playing cards, inspired by Slay the Spire and games of that genre. We were constantly chatting - the jam was soon, but we had no idea how the project would go.\n\nMiku reached out to @emiri, our producer friend (check him out here: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC1f-lKIatUwQBLzHuf98s0g) and asked:\n\n![emiri.png](\/\/\/raw\/284\/53\/z\/68e8b.png)\n\nMiku sent him the proposal and showed him the rules of Ludum Dare. He was in, and even though we didn\u2019t know anything else at the time, we knew that the music would be a banger. Miku spent some extra time researching previous game jam entries that were card games, to make sure we were all on the same page as to what made people want to play these games to completion.\n\nWhen the countdown timer hit 0, our team excitedly hit refresh, only to be met with a syntaxerror. Oops! Refreshing again, we finally found that it was the Tiny Creatures theme. With so many thoughts racing through our minds, we started our meeting about 15 minutes past the theme reveal. We were ready to discuss how we would interpret this theme. The game has only just begun.\n\n**The Meeting**\n\nAfter exchanging the usual pleasantries, we headed right into it with a Discord Whiteboard. Although the controls weren\u2019t perfect, we found a way to make it work. We simply needed a place to quickly write down ideas and iterate.\nWe began discussing how our game proposal would work into this, how to interpret the tiny creatures, further ideas, and most importantly: how do we down scope our game so it would be completable in a weekend?\n\nAn important reminder to designers everywhere: It\u2019s fun to design in a vacuum, but the most important part of this process was to design with the capabilities of our team. None of our designs, even if it was the most elegant, would mean anything if it wasn\u2019t going to get implemented. After an hour of discussion, refining and cutting ideas, we ended up with four buckets to organize our ideas:\n-\tConfirmed Ideas \u2013 These ideas are priority #1 on implementation\n-\tStretch \u2013 We will get to these ideas if we have enough time after the jam\n-\tIdea Pool \u2013 Extra ideas that we could add or not add.\n-\tRejected \u2013 We simply did not pursue these ideas further.\n\nDiscord\u2019s Whiteboard feature was helpful in allowing us to move ideas around, as well as providing some sketching tools so that we could have a bare bones idea of what the game would eventually look like. Using the feature to move ideas around, we were able to tighten the list of what we must do. We got an estimation from our engineer as to when each feature would be complete, and we started to march towards our goal.\n\nWe knew we wanted to make an accessible game, playable on mobile and browser, so with that in mind, we got ready for the first 24 hours!\n\n![miku_portrait.png](\/\/\/raw\/284\/53\/z\/68e8d.png)\n","comments":0,"created":"2024-10-17T00:30:43Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":406164,"love":9,"love-timestamp":"2024-10-20T12:36:44Z","meta":[],"modified":"2024-10-20T12:36:44Z","name":"Behind the Scenes of Miku's Minion Madness: Before the Jam","node-timestamp":"2024-10-17T00:49:55Z","parent":396587,"parents":[1,5,9,395186,396587],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/56\/mikus-minion-madness\/behind-the-scenes-of-mikus-minion-madness-before-the-jam","published":"2024-10-17T00:49:20Z","scope":"public","slug":"behind-the-scenes-of-mikus-minion-madness-before-the-jam","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":1277240},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"406164","n_urlkey":"447617","n_parent":"396587","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/56\/mikus-minion-madness\/behind-the-scenes-of-mikus-minion-madness-before-the-jam","n_slug":"behind-the-scenes-of-mikus-minio","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"218242","n_created":"1729125043","n_modified":"1729427804","n_version":"1277240","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/56\/mikus-minion-madness\/behind-the-scenes-of-mikus-minion-madness-before-the-jam","text":"Hi, Misa here, one of the developers on Miku's Minion Madness (https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/56\/mikus-minion-madness), and I wanted to talk about the making of the game! This one will be a bit long, so we'll split it into multiple posts. This one is the Before the Jam edition.\n\n**2 Days Before the Jam**\n\n@poco0317 and my fianc\u00e9e @miku had decided months before this point that we would participate, but with the looming weekend, no ideas, and all of us facing general exhaustion, we were just going to see where it would go. Maybe we\u2019d get a shell of a project out, or maybe we would just be one of the unfinished entries. We were ready to face any possibility. We had also recruited our friend @jason-woerner, who like myself and @miku, has extensive experience in the gaming industry. After thinking about it, Miku decided we simply couldn\u2019t waste the talents of this team!\n\nIt only took a moment for our team lead to go from \"Should we do this?\" to \"We should do this!\" Miku took point and in 30 minutes, wrote up a card rogue-like adventure. We decided to head into the weekend with this general plan, but otherwise we had no specific ideas until the theme would be revealed.\n\n**1 Day Before the Jam**\n\nWe were all feeling a bit of anxiety the day before - we had a solid base idea, although it was a pretty large scope, if we included everything we'd like to achieve. We decided to downscale it further after the theme came out. We knew we wanted some elements of playing cards, inspired by Slay the Spire and games of that genre. We were constantly chatting - the jam was soon, but we had no idea how the project would go.\n\nMiku reached out to @emiri, our producer friend (check him out here: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC1f-lKIatUwQBLzHuf98s0g) and asked:\n\n![emiri.png](\/\/\/raw\/284\/53\/z\/68e8b.png)\n\nMiku sent him the proposal and showed him the rules of Ludum Dare. He was in, and even though we didn\u2019t know anything else at the time, we knew that the music would be a banger. Miku spent some extra time researching previous game jam entries that were card games, to make sure we were all on the same page as to what made people want to play these games to completion.\n\nWhen the countdown timer hit 0, our team excitedly hit refresh, only to be met with a syntaxerror. Oops! Refreshing again, we finally found that it was the Tiny Creatures theme. With so many thoughts racing through our minds, we started our meeting about 15 minutes past the theme reveal. We were ready to discuss how we would interpret this theme. The game has only just begun.\n\n**The Meeting**\n\nAfter exchanging the usual pleasantries, we headed right into it with a Discord Whiteboard. Although the controls weren\u2019t perfect, we found a way to make it work. We simply needed a place to quickly write down ideas and iterate.\nWe began discussing how our game proposal would work into this, how to interpret the tiny creatures, further ideas, and most importantly: how do we down scope our game so it would be completable in a weekend?\n\nAn important reminder to designers everywhere: It\u2019s fun to design in a vacuum, but the most important part of this process was to design with the capabilities of our team. None of our designs, even if it was the most elegant, would mean anything if it wasn\u2019t going to get implemented. After an hour of discussion, refining and cutting ideas, we ended up with four buckets to organize our ideas:\n-\tConfirmed Ideas \u2013 These ideas are priority #1 on implementation\n-\tStretch \u2013 We will get to these ideas if we have enough time after the jam\n-\tIdea Pool \u2013 Extra ideas that we could add or not add.\n-\tRejected \u2013 We simply did not pursue these ideas further.\n\nDiscord\u2019s Whiteboard feature was helpful in allowing us to move ideas around, as well as providing some sketching tools so that we could have a bare bones idea of what the game would eventually look like. Using the feature to move ideas around, we were able to tighten the list of what we must do. We got an estimation from our engineer as to when each feature would be complete, and we started to march towards our goal.\n\nWe knew we wanted to make an accessible game, playable on mobile and browser, so with that in mind, we got ready for the first 24 hours!\n\n![miku_portrait.png](\/\/\/raw\/284\/53\/z\/68e8d.png)\n","title":"Behind the Scenes of Miku's Minion Madness: Before the Jam","wayback_source":[]}