This was a first for me, I have never taken part in a game jam before so I was very excited to get involved. When I first read the theme I made the rookie mistake of not reading the next line and thought that the theme was locked until you registered for the jam. What followed was about 15 minutes of confusion. I eventually caught on.
Locked instantly gave us a few interesting ideas. We originally looked set on going with the idea of being "locked" in a bar when every one else had gone home. I still think this is a good idea for a puzzle game and we may revisit it in the future. I'm not sure where the idea came from but the idea of a herd of cattle being loose on a farm and needing to lock them back up was suggested by one of us. It was already Wednesday at this stage so we decided to go with it. So the idea was set, herding cattle.... but there's zombies! Why? I don't think I should have to answer that questions by saying anything other than, it's zombies!
We tried to set the scope small and stick to what we knew. All my experience in game development comes in the Unity game engine so I think that pushed us down that road as it would have been a much bigger undertaking by me to pick up Unreal in a short time. We divided up the work and thankfully Paddy was happy to work on most of the art for the game.
The idea is simple; your cows have escaped the barn because the zombies have spooked them. You have to find them in the fields before the zombies do and herd them back to the barn.
There are a few things you have to compete with while trying to herd the cattle
- Zombies will try and eat you too
- The zombies currently locked up in the barn will try and escape again
- If you get your gun out then the cattle will be spooked and run away
We tried to keep the scope small and set ourselves the goals of producing all the art, graphics and code required for the game. We had a lot of ideas that we dropped quickly because we didn't want to have the scope so big we couldn't complete.
- Grenades
- Zombie variants
- Procedural map generation
- Multiple gun variants
- Zombie cattle
- An original soundtrack
I think if we continue to develop this game then these ideas would be incorporated into any future design. We have already talked about taking the current idea and expanding on it in such a way that it would fit in the rogue like genre.
With that said we worked hard over the two weeks and I am exceedingly happy with the result. We were able to stick to the timeframe and deliver a game that we find fun (if difficult at times).
The objective of playing the game is to save all 10 cattle before the zombies eat them. My best is 7 saved and 3 eaten. If you can beat this then let me know, it would be great to know someone has.
Also, any feedback and thoughts are appreciated.
I hope everyone who took part also enjoyed the game jam. It was my first but it certainly won't be my last.