The main game interface for Mama Is Sick

So the 28th Ludum Dare marks the first time I have participated in the mainline Ludum Dare event, though I was previously a participant in the Mini Ludum Dares 44 and 45.  Myself and a teammate, JaymeeMak, made a game called Mama Is Sick (submission page here) and submitted it yesterday afternoon after 72 hours of mostly work and a little sleep.

Mama Is Sick is a resource management game in which “You Only Get One” dollar a day with which you must try and feed yourself and your family, as well as pursue an education.  It was developed entirely in Unity, using Unity’s GUI functions; I was the programmer on the project, while Jaymee handled narrative design, art, and audio, and we shared the tasks of gameplay and interface design.

Successes

The development process was really fun; this is my fourth game jam this year, and the whole concept is really starting to grow on me.  By Friday night, a few hours after the theme was announced, we had a basic prototype of our game, and by Monday morning it was mostly bugfixes and polish that we had left to do.

Of the things we did well, I think scope and planning was definitely one of them.  Going with an entirely menu-driven game was a better choice than implementing some kind of game world behind the menu, as it helped us focus and flesh out our mechanics without getting distracted.  The mechanics we had were just enough to keep us busy for the better part of two days, but not enough to overwhelm us by the time the jam ended.

We also did well with working as a team with complementary skillsets.  The fact that each area of the game was being looked after by the person in a best position to perform those tasks really helped us keep things on schedule, and made sure it all worked out in the end; we also did a good job at effectively communicating what we were doing and what needed to be done, to make sure we were mostly synced up during development.

Finally, I think we did a good job at integrating the theme in our game; it’s not a strictly one-thing-forever scenario, but the whole concept of living off only a dollar a day has a strong presence in the public consciousness, and I think we ended up with a pretty interesting game for it.

Improvements

As for what we could improve, one of the things we concluded was that we needed a better introduction to the game mechanics; most of the difficulties players had with the game involved not knowing exactly how the mechanics or interface worked.  Instruction screens are nice, but ideally we would have had some kind of in-game tutorial, which we unfortunately didn’t have the time to implement.

Along a similar vein, I think we could have made an interface and game that felt more responsive to player actions.  We tried to make an audiovisually responsive interface, and succeeded to some extent, but there is definitely room for improvement on that front.  Buttons could change color when hovered or clicked on; the upgrade mechanic could have been clarified through more obvious feedback; etc.  We thought a lot about these things during the game and are confident that we’ve learned lessons that can be applied to future projects we work on.

Finally, from my programmer’s perspective, I didn’t do a very good job at making modular code.  As I was assembling everything very quickly, and needed to work within Unity’s still somewhat unfamiliar framework (me being used to the much more blank-slate approach afforded by raw C++), I could have spent a bit more time making more reusable and modular functions for different kinds of buttons, actions and resources.  This would have helped a lot on Monday, when I spent a lot of time fixing or debugging problems that stemmed from the game mostly being run through a few very large functions.  On future projects I will definitely keep that in mind.

Conclusion

This was a really fun and instructive experience, and however the ratings may fall, getting the game out the door and seeing people’s initial and mostly positive responses is a great feeling.  I hope to take the things I learned making Mama Is Sick into future projects, and I can’t wait for the next chance to take part in a game jam (Mini Ludum Dare #48, I am looking at you!).

I should also thank our two playtesters from before we submitted the game, as well as everyone who takes the time to play Mama Is Sick and provide feedback for us; as game design students and future developers, these jams are really important learning experiences for us.  And a big shout out to everyone who managed to get a game in there, big or small; 2065 games made over the weekend!  Wow, that’s really incredible.

Of course, though, my greatest thanks go to my teammate Jaymee, for bringing her great talent, spirit and work ethic to the game (as well as for keeping me away from the game’s art).  Alone, I could only have made something lesser than what we managed to create as a team.  Thank you!