The Jam: Day 3 Final!

If nothing else, the final day of the GameJam was validation that we had started something awesome.  It began much like the day before, only this time with sweet caramel danishes from Federhoffers bakery.  Mmmm.

After the treats we immediately got to work.  Again it was just Sam, Scott and me to start out.  Scott game me some frames of the goat character animating (prior to this it had been static), so I spent the morning adding an animation system.  He gave Sam images of npc characters falling to the ground and twitching, which was a nice touch.

All at once at around 2:00, other people began to arrive.  Elonka showed up first and Sam copied his project over to her laptop so that she could help him solve some of the logic issues he was running into.  Then, as we were about to leave for lunch, Jared arrived with his roommate John Anderson – an awesome graphic artist. We got him up to speed on the projects and then headed out for grub.

Upon coming back, we split into separate rooms and got to work.  John revamped the background tile grid to make it less utilitarian and more sandy-desert bad-ass, and Jared started putting together some music and sound effects.

Meanwhile, on The Blame Game, Elonka helped by adding some neat graphic effects while Sam coded up a snazzy title screen and instructions page.

The tile-based goat game still needed a name.  The project file had been called The Blame Game, but that was starting to get confusing what with both games being called the same thing. I put out a call for suggestions and Jared came through. The game would be called Passing Blame since thats what youre doing with each little icon that you pick up.

There was a lot that I wanted to get done, but ultimately I ended up spending most of the day putting the assets that everyone else was making into the game. I’m not complaining since the game looks outstanding now, but I feel like theres still some strategy missing that would have come about if I had spent more time adding features.

Time was ticking by and before we knew it we had an hour left. We decided to order Chinese food in for dinner and eat just before the final exhibition.

Clayton showed up with his brother to check out the final games. The clock was ticking and Passing Blame still needed a title screen.  I passed that task off to Scott and within minutes he come back with something awesome.  I threw it into the game just as time ran out.

We were finished.

I went into the other room and there were like three times as many Chinese food containers as there were people.  We all ate like kings (Chinese kings), and then the demos kicked off.

First, we played several intense rounds of Passing Blame.  I havent really described the game yet, so I’ll try to do so now.  Each of the 3 or 4 players begins with a certain number of blame tokens, and an inventory of 4 slots filled with random power-ups.  Your goal is to rid yourself of all your blame by picking up as many power-ups as you can.

There is a catch though.  You can only pick up power-ups when you have an empty slot in your inventory, and you can only clear slots by pressing one of the Xbox 360 controllers face buttons to drop power-ups for the other players.

Power-ups do one of several things.  The most common power-ups pass blame to the player sitting to your left or right, but there are a few rare ones that can change the flow of the game.  One of these automatically warps all players back to their corner of the screen.  The other swaps blame with whoever has the least amount when the icon is picked up.

In theory the game will involve luring opponents around the board by placing power ups, but, in actuality it’s a button mashing fiesta with just enough hints of strategy to make you keep playing to try to identify where that strategy lies.

The Blame Game is much more low-concept.  You shoot a blame gun at women and knock over old people and baby carriages. Its awesome!

Your goal is to place as much blame on randomly spawning women as you can by shooting them with your upgradeable blame gun.  Your gun begins as a blame pistol, then upgrades to a blame shotgun, then a blame Uzi, then a blamezooka.  When you upgrade your weapon the screen shakes.

Shooting weapons or getting hit by one of the women will cause your blame meter (life bar) to decrease, and the only way to increase it is to rack up guilt by running into old people and baby carriages.

Watch out for cars! They speed through the levels hilariously wiping out anything in their path.

When you run it of blame the game ends and you’re sent to a screen that says, “Its your fault,” which has been referred to as “the best screen in any game ever.”  Mostly because of the text on it, but you can knock over some old men here too if you so desire.

Finally, Elonka showed off her non-GameJam game next, which is a facebook game called Fantasy University.  It should be out in a few weeks, so check it out!

After that, everyone said their goodbyes, exchanged email addresses, and left.  I think we’re all happy with the friends we made and incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish in just 24 hours.

We made some pretty rockin’ games, but dont take my word for it.  Come back in a few days and them out yourself when we put them online to play for free!

If the GameJam sounded like fun and you’d like to be a part of it, we’re planning on doing another one January 29th-31st, 2011 as part of the Global Game Jam.  Check back to this site later this year for more details.  We’d love to have you!

-Wes

No comments to show