I'm in !

I'll be using :

• Unity 2017
• Visual Studio Community
• Krita

LIVE STREAM : https://www.twitch.tv/streams/25872875840/channel/83812628

DAMN THAT WAS HARDCORE ! BUT VLAD SURVIVED ! Cause,...you know. he's vegan.

Hi fellow Jammer,

When my friend Guimero told me he was participating the Ludum Dare 44 this week end i was like "meh i forgot this year and i'm busy". But when a few friends started to brainstorm on the discord i was so excited that i built a prototype while my daughter was asleep.

It was really fun. It was Satursday afternoon. I spent the next 24 hours making the game. I will not lie to you, the game could be hard to understand/master, it may be full of bugs but i'll tell you : i'm proud of myself.

I wanted a social satire game. I could picture those tie guys blindly chasing money without caring about the moment they will fall. And when i added the fact that a player could throw things at others this was so much fun to implement. In the end, i added a "tutotial" to explain the game, it f** up my entire project minutes before i submit. I was thinking "Man my game sucks, noone will enjoy it.". And then i realised something :

I think we all hate all the things we couldn't do in the game. I should have done this, i shouldn't hade added not. But we should embrace everything we've done so far. Making a game is hard. It's an achievement, a celebration to creation. Embrace your game flaws man. Because you're the one that create, make, craft. You're the one who spent tons of hours crying "WHY AREN'T YOU WORKING ????" all along.

THIS is what i can do in a few hours and i never considered myself as a "true" game developer. For the first time in my life, i made exactly every single line of code, every pixel like i planned. This was really a powerful feeling.

Cheers to that feeling and have an awesome day buddy ! @guimero64 @rodstar @thierry-brochart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GSaiJyBdKE

cover.jpg

Context

(French guy here, sorry for my bad english !)

Being a dad can be quite challenging when it comes to participating in game jams. I use to be a young jam adventurer who would spent 48/72 hours making a game. Now...it's a little more challenge to organise myself in jams with my family.

So i started the LUDUM DARE with the joy of making something new and the fear that i wouldn't be able to have the time to do what i specifically had in mind. I wouldn"t do something i couldn't be proud of, something dull, and wouldn't sacrifice my time with my daughter either.

So the entire work on this game was mostly during my daughter naps and, well, at night.

I wanted this game to have a strong gamefeel, a strong backstory with an emotional plot twist. I knew i wouldn't have time to code advanced mechanics so i just made a game when trying to control the player was the main challenge. After consideration, maybe too hard because most of players won't finish the game because of this...

SPOILER ALERT HERE

I wanted a end that would impact the player. So i started to think about the end first. A child trapped inside his/her head because of an accident. A father guilt-ridden and a bitter brain. Dr.Brain would be bitter because brains HAVE to have control over things and the fact that he can't drove him crazy. He began to get mad to the wrong "person" : consciousness. Once Dr. Brain was defined, i thought Guilt would be the key to the understanding of the game itself and the "why Consciousness would be trapped here in the first place".

Then i though : "they say that people in Coma could here everything". Everything since then would be pretty obvious for me : There would be things in the real world transcripted in the child's head. The music in the room had to play a role. Debussy's Clair de Lune is one of my favorite music and was perfect for the role. I added a "low-pass effect" to make it sound far away, blurred and in the end, removed the effect in the real world. Imaginary friend would be bringing his/her cuddy toy to life and Guilt would be the materialisation of the father crying that it was all his fault.

For this matter, i wanted to be sort of unclear about what really brought the child to coma and what really was the reason of his guilty conscience. A father has thousands reasons to feel guilty about anything that happens to his child even if it's not his fault in most of the cases. It all returns to one thing : AGENCY or more like the LOSS of AGENCY.

MISTAKES WERE MADE...AGAIN

I spent around 15 hours making the game. In the last hours, i tried to solve a bug. Of course, i solved it and created a bigger one without noticing it. People would now get stuck if they come to close to an box cliff... This ridiculous "isGrounded" bug block the player and kill the game. I'm sooooo frustrated about that but HEY that's game jams right ? Making stupid rushed choices and regret them for life lol !

Hope you liked the game !

Cheers !

Game here : ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/consciousness-in-a-jar/ HTML5 Version live : https://loganou974.itch.io/consciousness-in-a-jar-html5

https://youtu.be/fOrPWaaxF7s

https://imgbbb.com/image/L7GPUG

https://youtu.be/fOrPWaaxF7s

Ratings

• Overall: 29th/512 4.25/5
• Fun: 77th/512 4/5
• Innovation: 96th/512 3.95/5
• Theme: 233rd/512 3.775/5
• Graphics: 159th/492 4.175/5
• Humor: 115th/374 3.775/5
• Mood: 23rd/475 4.3/5

Surprising reviews

When i started this jam i wasn't sure i would be able to deliver something at the end. Taking care of my daughter and working when she was napping or sleeping was basically my jam. To sum up, i actually worked on this concept for about 15 hours. So when i submitted the game i didn't except a lot of feedbacks, i just put all my efforts on the mood and storytelling, couldn't push it too far.

I didn't except so much good reviews and rates, i gave me the fire to continue creating games, guys. Thanks you for the kind words, it meant a lot !

"But dude, what about the Theme ?"

Well, at first my little character was supposed to get friends helping him. The more you would have friends, the more you could do some more primary actions (double jump, dash, some other fun stuff) but...you know, time just ran out of... me lol.

I decided to focus on immersion at start with this intro pun from the "boss" in the game, reinforcing your will to hate him and escape. This was supposed to be the "start from nothing" but i know i could do better.

What's next ?

Well, i guess this gamejam has become one of my favs, see you at the next one ? Keep creating !