Link to gameplay video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b3A4FjFK0g

Team
Nicholas Saarela - Lead programmer, game design
Michelle Lauriste - Environment design, UI design, game design
Noah Nguyen - Character design, UI design, writing
Jonas Füllemann - Sound design, programming assistance

Tools and Resources
Discord, Trello, Youtube, Pinterest, Catbox, Google Drive, Google Docs, Github, Unity, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Aseprite, Unity, JetBrains Rider, FMOD, Cubase, Reaper, SourceTree, Soundly, Fontspace.com

Estimated work hours
74 + 75 + 38,5 + 48 = 235,5H

License
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed

Short description of the game
A new day has come, the golden Knight of the Golden Apple Kingdom rises and embarks on the grand journey of buying apple pies for the Grandmother Queen. Keep your heads up and don't lose sight of truth, o young Knights, for the road ahead is long and full of fog.

Theme
Granny's Apple Pie is a story-based game developed from our interpretation of "Missing" or the feeling when you're so used to someone's presence that reality doesn't feel quite right when they're no longer with you.

Development Process
A. Team

The Game Jam began on Tuesday with Noah (Vietnamese) and Michelle (Estonian), two artists; alongside Jonas (Swiss) the sound designer, in the original matchmaking formation. We then asked Nicholas (Finnish) from another team to join us because we needed a programmer. The team has two different time zones (EET and CET), so we worked in a hybrid way: individual work, on-site teamwork combined with online meetings through Discord.

Throughout the jam, we utilized a Google Docs “Master Doc” file as an internal devlog to keep track of everything and to make sure everyone is on the same page. Trello, Google Drive and Catbox the filehoster were also used to handle work.


B. Ideation

All members have similar goals and interests for the jam, therefore it was easy for us to come up with an idea that we all like to work on. Right after the first stream, we started brainstorming ideas for the game. The brainstorming sandbox was colorful: we jotted down everything we could think of, ranging from sparks of ideas to TV episodes and novels. We talked a bit about the kinds of game that we personally like, and it was from here that we came up with our final idea:

A playable character going on their daily routine, only to realize that there is something missing. For example: the quest calls for them to go buy eggs for grandma, but then the character can never finish that quest because their grandma is no longer there. A sense of sad surprise because it took long enough for you to realize the things you do are not the same anymore, because people you used to do them with are long gone.

Because Jonas was busy at that time and three other members happened to be on site, we nailed down the concept and a rough plot on our first meeting. We also managed to divide labor on the first day so that everyone had an idea what their jobs would be.

C. Development
We developed the code and visual assets simultaneously. When Nicholas had a rough foundation for the code, Noah had done a rough sprite for our MC. That way, we were able to test the scaling and movement animation of the MC on our first day. After Michelle delivered our final visual concept, Jonas could start working on the soundtrack.

We tested and iterated everything as we worked. Errors were weeded out here and there, and mid-way we decided to add more to the game so that the story would become more complete. Because the workload was too heavy for Nicholas to handle, Jonas eventually had to help out with programming the UI himself.

On the last day, we had some problems with Itch.io’s submission interface, but we managed to solve it and publish the game in time.


Further Developments
Considering that “Granny’s Apple Pie” was a small passion project for a week-long GameJam, there are many things we left out of the game. The four of us wanted the game to be the best we could execute for our portfolio, so we agreed to continue polishing it after the jam.

The game we submitted only had the beginning and the end, while we have an in-between gameplay in our roster. We decided to save that to work on after the jam because we didn’t want to cram everything in two days. When this in-between is added, the story will feel more well-rounded.

You can view our Google Drive through this link, where you can see even more assets and read the full document of our work process in the Masterdoc :)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NLt2qFk8Fy-IjIcjzdH0JVMjRsjJb4i6?usp=sharing