About the game

A Game of Jam is an action-adventure game where you play as an unnamed hero who has to defeat the evil Lord Evil.

Plot

The once peaceful country of Jamia has been been conquered by the evil Lord Evil. You are Jamia's last hope. Will you be able to find the seven sacred jars of jam, and defeat the evil Lord Evil before he does something even more evil? Will you be able to restore a peace that will last until the release of the sequel?

MONSTERS

• Trolls are slow and dumb. But don't let that fool you! They don't like it when you get too close to them.
• Bouncers are quite harmless as long as you leave them alone. Don't attack them!!!

Development and team

The game is written in vanilla JavaScript, and there is only one of us. 

GAME LINK: A Game of Jam

Monster slaying is now an option.

I've set two subgoals before moving on to the next step. 

Goal 1: Finish the monster class. Make it reusable.

Goal 2: Create a map editor.

Hopefully both will be completed by tomorrow.

I've overhauled the monster class and implemented several new features and bugs.

• The monsters can have an animated(!) death
• It's no longer possible to just step right over the monsters without consequences
• The player can die
• There is a very simple FSM at play
• Code looks like spaghetti

The monsters are quite dumb at the moment, and can't use weapons. That is the assignment for tomorrow. Monsters that shoot back at the player.

If I get some extra time, I will upload a gameplay video later on today.

One more update today. I did some major refactoring, and managed to make the game more scaleable. Anyhow, It's way past bedtime now, so I'm signing off.

Tomorrow, I might implement some pathfinding and gameworld mechanics.

.

Evil trolls attacking the player. Player acting in self defense.

Time to call it a day. 

Pathfinding is completed, and the map editor is making progress. Screenshot from map editor. This map will probably not make it into the game.

It still blows my mind you're coding everything from scratch! Amazing so far!!

-Noahh

So today didn't feel very productive, I just added a lot of boring stuff, such as the ability to pause the game and resize the screen. The map editor can be used to save and load maps now. Furthermore, our hero can now move on to the next screen! His world just doubled in size!

At just about halftime, I've finally come up with a roadmap! Here it goes: 

1. Make the map creator into a full blown world creator. (Currently, I can only change the tiles on one screen, and I can't add monsters)
2. Make a stats box, showing the player's health.
3. Let the player pick up objects. (The point of the game is to collect jam jars).
4. Make a welcome screen, pause screen, game over screen, and game completion screen.
5. By this time, all the game mechanics are basically implemented, and the game can be completed. Everything after this is extra credits.
6. More monster mechanics. (I have the concept for at least three more enemies)
7. Create the final boss.
8. Polishing.
9. More polishing.

I will feel confident once I reach point five. After that, all I need is creativity. I have nothing cool to show so here is a screenshot of my map editor.

Did some work on the map editor yesterday. I can now edit the whole game world, although I can't add objects or monsters yet. This is probably the map I will use for this game jam. I know, it's only nine screens!

Today was mostly cleanup and adding text and stats to the game. All the screens ( start, pause, game over, win) are completed, and health is now shown.

Monsters and objects can now be added to the map. Unfortunately, there aren't too many monsters or objects to add at this moment.

The only thing left to add to the map editor is the ability to create paths for the monsters. I also need to make the objects interactive. I will probably work on that tomorrow. After that, I'll work on adding more monsters.

Map editor is completed. Still only one kind of monsters. They don't look too good on a green background...

And the game is finally completed!!! It is playable and beatable. I hope it is enjoyable despite being very short. 

I built the whole engine for this project during the jam, and it is quite messy. There  is just one minor bug as far as I know, which has to do with wall collision in specific cases. I might fix that in a future update.

This is what I did today:

• The main antagonist was added
• Projectiles were added
• Jam is collectable
• Sound effects were recorded and added
• Level design was slightly polished
• Death animations
• Endgame

HERE'S THE LINK: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-summer-2019/rate/446596

Super small update to the game! Thank you all for your feedback! Please feel free to offer more feedback!

GAME LINK: A Game of Jam

POST-MORTEM: A Game of Jam POST-MORTEM