Our game in the jam is about tricky maneuvers using a grapple hook.
From playtesting, I knew that some people would immediately “get” how to maneuver through obstacles, and for other people it was really difficult. In order to try to satisfy both casual and hardcore players in the game, I wanted to have the main path be relatively easy (so that casual players can complete the game without frustration), and completely optional bonus side rooms that had more difficult challenges. (To let hardcore players choose to play something harder. Think optional strawberries in Celeste, if you’ve played that game.)
At the end of these side rooms, I wanted the player to collect slices of pizza. At the end of the game, a single voice line would acknowledge how many pizza slices the player collected, but otherwise the game would stay the same. (I didn’t want to penalize casual players for not completing the optional challenges.)
We had prepared a bunch of voice lines to trigger in the side rooms, acknowledging the ridiculousness of getting “sidetracked” from your main objective in order to collect pizza, and as you collect more slices of pizza, the more over-the-top the voice lines would get. (To the point of just yelling “PIZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” pretty much out of character.)
Internally, I dubbed all of this as the Pizza Zones; since outside of them there was no mention of pizza at all in the game.
I was very excited for the Pizza Zones. Unfortunately, we ran out of time in the jam. We could only complete the main path (and just barely). So they were cut, and the 30 or so additional pizza-related voice lines that were made for the Zones, did not make it in.
If we had like 2 more days… we could have added the Pizza Zones. Oh well, that’s game jams for ya! Maybe we can add them for a post-jam version!