This is my first game jam and I am super stoked. I've made a number of small JavaScript games before and recently finished a class in Unity, but this will be my first major project in Unity. Since the theme was water and I already had a number of fish sprites for an unfinished game, I decided to adapt those and create a "Fish Racing Game". Like Mario Kart meets a 2D endless runner.

Here's a couple of those sprites: and they're all available for others to use as well.  https://www.piskelapp.com/user/6242968237244416/public

My friend and I also had a Jam Sesh to write some music. I think we have the race theme here:

https://soundcloud.com/marty-strauss/july-15-fish-racer

Devlog 2

I spent more than a couple hours just trying to figure out how to clamp rotation  for a  2D sprite in Unity. For  my own sanity, the solution that ended up being most applicable to me was in the comments here: https://answers.unity.com/questions/169197/euler-angle-problems-with-rotation-li...

I've also added a bubble ring which acts as speed boost, currently it's the only way to out speed your opponent. I plan on adding a few more  speed increasers and a few speed decreasers.

Instead of developing the actual mechanics further, I decided to to work on a dialog system to add a little personality to the game.  This may be a too sassy of a trout.

Now to figure out why the trout doesn't go in between the front and back kelp sprites...

DevLog 3

* Added Clam, Bubble, and Light Shaft for speed boost
* Added Win State - end race
* Created several sections for Endless Runner version of the race
* Created a structured race to compare which version is more fun.
* Grabbed speed up power ups turn into bubbles and float away

I also fought with a parallax scrolling system for hours and weird bugs with child object. But now I have a foundation for building a better race!

And I also have a simple main menu created! Things are moving!

Dev Log 4

Today I added  an improved menu screen with instructions on how to play. I think a lot of devs making their first games lose player perspective. It may be obvious to me what the game is, but it should probably be made clear to the player what the goals are and how the game works. 

I've also  got one full race done, as in, you can load into the game, win or lose a race and then return to the menu. Just a few more tweaks and hopefully it will be fun!

Dev Log 4

I've started to add the potatoes to the meat of my game. 

I've also allowed swappable player characters. It's only a sprite change, but allowing players some level of customization I think keeps players from getting bored too quickly and prevents things from becoming too repetitive. If I can figure out how to make this a reward for wining the first race then I think it will allow the game a little more staying power. Which,  in its current state, it could really use.

One issue I had run into was flipping the arrow buttons so that one pair face up and the others face down. If you rotate the X rotation to -180 (to flip it upside down) the buttons don't respond... For some reason Unity only accepts click ray casts on the "front" side of buttons? So weird. Scaling the Y value by -1 works though.

https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/120561/rotating-a-button-in-unity-ui...