I joined a Game Jam with 1 other teammate, to create a game within 72 hours with the limitation that “Dice as main mechanic”
We began by brainstorming as a pair what we could do between the two of us within the allotted time. We decided to roll into the whole Dice as the main mechanic by trying to make everything, within reason based around dice.
We decided to make a game based around surviving wave after wave of D6 Dice monsters that would chase down the player, while you as a player would have a dice revolver that allowed you to take down these enemies. We were aiming for a very basic Geometry wars type vibe but in first person.
We didn’t get round to it because of the time limit but we did have a plan on if we had time what additional enemy types would look like and behave like. When crafting these ideas we really pushed into making enemies that had one major behaviour behind them since we didn’t want the player to get confused by what any single enemy would do. We chose to base all the enemies off dice since they would all have a distinct look and silhouette to them which would help the player during gameplay.
We had the basic D6 as a chaser enemy that would try and take you down with bite attacks
We had the idea of making the d4 dice into a mine enemy that would spawn away from the player and choose to hide itself in the floor, giving the player something else they had to think about when dodging around the map.
We had an idea for the D8 that would float around the edge of the arena and would try to shoot the player with lighting orbs. The idea behind this was that then we’d have 3 different tiers of enemies the player would have to priorities in their head. A chaser the D6, An ambusher the D4 and a Archer being the D8, all of which could become issues to the player if left unchecked however by themselves would be quite manageable.
For this piece of work, I worked with the other team members to:
- Brainstorm an idea
- Plan and give out tasks
- Review each other’s work
My personal role within the game Jam was:
- Designing, modelling and animating the D6 Dice Monster
- Creating the basic chase AI of the Enemy AI
- Designing, Modelling and animating the Player’s Weapon
- Creating both the pixel and fog shader
- Sourcing and finding sound effects for the game
- Programming the Enemy AI, attack, death and movement as well as the players damage and weapon blueprints
I felt very proud with a lot of the work I did in this game jam since I pushed myself to do things I hadn’t done as much before. I felt like the enemies came out looking amazing and the animations for both them and the weapon reload are something I can’t not enjoy when I look back at them. These were all things I’d never done before within the engine, I only had a passing knowledge on setting a animation rig up in blender and exporting animations through to unreal and I really think that I managed to push through a high level of quality in my work within the game jams limited time requirement.