Hi jam folks!

I didn’t even wait for the theme announcement — I just went to sleep like an old man. In the morning I saw the theme, got a bit sad because I already had another idea prepared, and originally wanted to make the game in Construct because I already spend enough time in Unreal at work lol.

My early ideas included: - a signal from space, - Doomguy jumping into the Earth’s core, - Morse code during war, - office signals, - forest Wi-Fi horror, - and neural signals in the body.

I actually started the forest horror version, then suddenly decided: no, let’s suffer properly and make it in Unreal, solo, in compo spirit, despite the fact that I absolutely do not know how to do 3D.

While I was in the shower, the idea finally clicked: signal distortion.
First it was some robot carrying a signal from point A to point B. Then I remembered an old idea I had back in 2012 about a physical backpack, where information could fall out and get mixed up. Then I remembered the “last brain cell” meme.

And that’s how the final idea was born:

you play as the last brain cell of a shy guy on a date, carrying Thoughts through his brain to the speech apparatus so he doesn’t say complete nonsense.

I opened Blender for the first time in 5 years, made a sphere with little arms and legs, watched a 6-minute rigging tutorial, imported it into Unreal, and somehow ended up with a dumb little neuron guy. Animation tutorials were no longer 6 minutes long, so I gave up on that and used Unreal’s built-in procedural animation instead. Because my export was broken, the rig was cursed, and IK didn’t behave, I ended up with floppy physics arms — which honestly looked funnier anyway.

I also tried to add jumping and moving platforms, but they felt terrible, so there is no jump in the game lol.

Then I spent half a day fighting a shader because I copied one from a stylization talk and it looked уныло, so I had to make my own weird fleshy version instead ahaha

By day two I finally had: - a weird brain-cell character, - a backpack, - fleshy brain terrain, - a Megabrain that spits out Thoughts in the correct order, - and the core loop.

The core loop is simple: - the Megabrain spits out Thoughts in the right order, - you memorize them, - you carry them through the level, - and throw them into the speech hole in that same order.

If you do it right, the guy says something normal and the Mood goes up.
If not, well… the date goes badly.

I wanted to add way more: - 3 stages of the date, - voice acting, - wind in the head, - shaking from nervousness, - scrambled Thoughts, - visual reactions from the girl.

But even without all that, I’m still really happy that I managed to finish the core gameplay loop — and make the whole thing 100% by myself.

If you want to help this poor guy survive his date, you can play it here:

Last Brain Cell

Thanks for reading, you’re awesome.