We created a sandbox game for PC about a hedgehog. Our inspiration was Katamari Damacy and all of the cute platformers back from our childhood. The player’s goal is to roll around and collect food for yourself. With what you collect, you can buy different upgrades. After a while, the hedgehog turns into a food-collecting machine:-) Come play and check it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/rollin

Overview

This is a quick postmortem about our game called Rollin’.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/rollin

Rollin’ is a fun arcade game made in the spirit of Katamari Damacy and other old-school platformers.

You play as a cute hedgehog who carries food on its spines:

You can upgrade your hedgehog to become a harvest-machine:

Below is the story of how we came up with this idea.

Theme

We've just learned that the theme for Ludum Dare 52 is going to be Harvest and started brainstorming.

Initially we had an idea of a game where you would control an agricultural combine, but we decided that it would be too obvious. Besides we couldn't come up with any unique mechanics or anything to make it stand out.

We also had an idea about a game where you harvest organs from people. This idea had a lot of black humor about it. The invented setting seemed pretty fun to us, but again, we didn't have any idea about how to make a unique gameplay in time for the jam. A random game from Google on this topic

This just wasn't it.

A game about a hedgehog!

Finally we came up with the idea of a hedgehog named Hogsworth who could roll around like in Katamari Damacy and collect food in the forest. (User @budaniel came up with the name Hogsworth, which we thank him for!). Katamari Damacy

Initially we planned the setting to be a gloomy autumn forest.

Hogsworth was supposed to have children who needed to be fed. And you could choose what to do at the end of the day – give the food to your children or upgrade yourself for the next day.

We also planned to place a grave of your hedgehog-mother somewhere in forest, who didn’t live to see the last winter.

Overall: melancholic music, vibes of This War of Mine and Papers, Please. This War of Mine

The first problem

As it usually happens, our plans turned out to be far more ambitious than our abilities were.

We didn't have a 3D-artist, and we didn't find a suitable autumn forest asset on the Internet. We only found a summer variant.

We decided to repaint the textures in yellow-orange color and correct some models, but then remembered that we still didn't have a 3D-artist.

A 3D model of Hogsworth was eventually made by our programmer. And so he became our 3D-artist.

Well-fed hoglets or upgrading

The choice of either feeding your children or upgrading yourself had to be removed.

We realized that we wouldn't have time to program and implement the logic for this choice, wouldn't be able to properly show the consequences of the player's actions. And properly is our only way of doing things.

As a result, the “existential crisis” from the choice of upgrading yourself or being a good parent was cut out.

Hedgehog’s dead mother

The model for mother-hedgehog stayed in the game until the very last second.

But then we realized that her presence at the level caused a bug with triggers for the character. There was no time to fix this so we decided to take her out (of the game).

And so the last thing that was making our game gloomy disappeared from it... Hogsworth's honest reaction

So when you're rollin’ around in our seemingly tranquil forest always remember that the cute Hogsworth the hedgehog carries a huge baggage with him.

And that baggage is not food…