itch.io

Hiya jammers!

Popped Corn Bytes is hosting its next game jam in April, so get ready 😎 The Popped Corn Flexijam, as the name suggests is flexible. Want to crush your project in a weekend? 💪 Cool! Got a full time job and can only do evenings? Also cool! 🙆‍♀️

• Submit games anytime during the submission period
• Use any engine
• Create a game in any genre
• Optionally join/form teams through our club's Discord
• Spend about two weeks making a game (or more! or less!), just make sure to make it during the submission period.

The jam is themed and ranked. The jam will have two winners, one popular choice and one picked by the host.

The goal is to finish a project and learn something new even if you have a busy life.  Here are some ways you can break down the month to suit your needs:

• One whole weekend
• Two straight weeks
• Every weekend through the submission period
• Any spare time over the entire submission period (a month!)

There are no limits as long as you submit before the deadline 👾 

Have any questions? Let me have 'em!

Ask them there here! 🤓

Below are some helpful tips for the game jam so you can have the best possible experience! I'll keep this up to date as we get closer to the jam.

• Join the Discord if you haven't already: https://discord.gg/BUqf2eqsgq
• Form your team in the #game-jams channel of the Discord
• Create your project's GitHub (or similar) with an empty shell project (in your chosen engine) before the jam

Joining the Discord

You can join the Discord by clicking the following link: https://discord.gg/BUqf2eqsgq

Once you've joined the discord, you'll need to go through the Onboarding process, which will ask you a few questions. Note: Be sure to select an answer to 'Why are you joining?'

• Game jams: get access to game-jam info and people
• Club trial access: If you're only looking for temporary Discord access

I didn't answer the questions correctly... how do I change my answer?

In Discord, head to the 'Channels & Roles' section in the Discord (located in the upper, left-hand corner on PC). There you can update your previous response.

GitHub/Version Control

Is this required to make a game? No. But you will thank yourself for learning the basics. You can share your work with others, especially code This is crucial when working in a team and hugely beneficial if asking for help with a bit of code. Need some examples? Take a look at this one for a Unity project we made a while back: https://github.com/poppedcornbytes/TiltaPong. 

Do you or your team have any questions about version control? Reach out to others on Discord or me (@www500 on Discord) to help you get set up.

Don't want to use GitHub? You don't need to any specific provider. Use whichever you like!

Really cool idea!

Tomorrow is the official start of the jam, so now's the time to get on board if you're interested. We have some people already looking for teams to join!

We've just revealed  the theme for the jam! Can't wait to see what you come up with :)

Theme: Transitions and Transformations

January is a time of transitions and transformations. Life and death, old and new. Resolutions are a transformations of the self. Feature a transition in your game, but be as creative as you can. Transforming characters. Shifting environments. Perhaps you'll Scene and UI transitions? Dynamic music based on character actions? Need some examples to get the juices flowing?

• Timmy transforms in to shield to prevent damage
•  Snowy the snowflake can transform into water to move fast, but can only attack when a snowflake
• All monsters turn red before they attack
• A custom snow-to-blizzard visual effect is used in between scenes
• A snowman has New Years resolutions and transforms as he accomplishes his goals
• The player changes appearance as they level up
• The environment changes to winter or spring if the player dies or is revived

Bonus Challenge

Seeking an extra challenge? One transition in your game must involve ice or snow. ❄⛄❄ 

Have questions about joining? Ask them here!

Below are some helpful tips for the game jam so you can have the best possible experience! I'll keep this up to date as we get closer to the jam.

• Join the Discord if you haven't already: https://discord.gg/BUqf2eqsgq
• Form your team in the #game-jams channel of the Discord
• Create your project's GitHub (or similar) with an empty shell project (in your chosen engine) before the jam

Joining the Discord

You can join the Discord by clicking the following link: https://discord.gg/BUqf2eqsgq

Once you've joined the discord, you'll need to go through the Onboarding process, which will ask you a few questions. Note: Be sure to select an answer to 'Why are you joining?'

• Game jams: get access to game-jam info and people
• Club trial access: If you're only looking for temporary Discord access

I didn't answer the questions correctly... how do I change my answer?

In Discord, head to the 'Channels & Roles' section in the Discord (located in the upper, left-hand corner on PC). There you can update your previous response.

GitHub/Version Control

Is this required to make a game? No. But you will thank yourself for learning the basics. You can share your work with others, especially code This is crucial when working in a team and hugely beneficial if asking for help with a bit of code. Need some examples? Take a look at this one for a Unity project we made a while back: https://github.com/poppedcornbytes/TiltaPong. 

Do you or your team have any questions about version control? Reach out to others on Discord or me (@www500 on Discord) to help you get set up.

Don't want to use GitHub? You don't need to any specific provider. Use whichever you like!

It's only two weeks to go until the start of the Popped Corn Bytes Jam 😁 If you haven't seen it yet, I hope you check it out. I'm looking forward to meeting some new people and see what you can create.

We'll be revealing the theme on 30 December... 😛

Oh no :( Hope you're able to host another one in the future!

Hiya, the link looks like it's missing the itch.io portion. Is this the right one? https://itch.io/jam/horror-fest-jam

Welcome, welcome!

Popped Corn Bytes is a small, virtual game development community. We're hosting our first game jam in January, and we'd love to have you join! 

• Submit games anytime during January
• Join/form teams through the club's Discord
• Use any engine
• Create a game in any genre

The jam is themed and ranked. The jam will have two winners, one popular choice and one host-selected game.

Our goal is to help you get your game finished this new year. January's a busy month, so for the entire month we suggest spending two weeks on your games. But you can break that down however you want. You can spend two straight weeks. You can do every weekend in January. Or if you have the time and want to spend the entire month? Go for it! There are no limits as long as you finish before 31 January.

Have any questions? Post below!

Wanna join? Click here: https://itch.io/jam/popped-corn-jam

Best,

www500

Thanks so much! Glad the effects came across well :)

I think the atmosphere to the game was nice, and I thought the monsters were a good choice (surprised me a few time actually!). I unfortunately couldn't really figure out what the objective was. It seemed like the combat was throwing glass bottles, but this didn't seem to do anything to the monsters. I did eventually find the knife, but I still died quite easily, maybe a lack of skill on my part! There was a set of locked doors that seemed like the objective, but I also wasn't sure if this ending was a troll ending given the way the game actually ended for me (i.e. I was too curious about a piece of paper).

Thanks for playing the game, and I appreciate your feedback! I'm glad you found it a bit spooky--that was one of the goals for our game, so that is really good to hear.

The camera focal was intentionally set the way it is, but it does make the character appear a bit nearsighted if that's what you're referring to. I can definitely see an argument for it being too strong/incorrect and questioned this myself when adding the effect. I ultimately decided to keep it as is, but it's good to hear your feedback on it.

The movement controller is the default FPS controller. The left and right movement is strafing, not walking, so it should be a different speed, but shouldn't be that much faster, so that is a bug. Thanks for identifying that.

That is a good point about the dialogue window, and I agree with that. Having the entry point outside the box would definitely improve the dialogue interface.

You are right that there are no footsteps and few ambient sounds. It was one of the next things to implement if there was a decent amount of time. The monsters do have an ambient chain sound emitting from them if you are close to them, however.

Weird that you can't reproduce it! My computer is weird with brightness, so it might be something to do with my settings. But it honestly wasn't that intrusive, and wasn't visible in the platforming scenes. What I seem to see is that in the dialogue/story scenes, you sometimes have pauses between lines of narration instead of a line immediately following the previous one. That last line was still visible after it seemingly faded to transparency in this scenario. Here's a snapshot I just took towards the end of the game.

Thanks for playing the game and for the feedback! The journal was one of the most fun parts of the project, so I'm glad you liked it. We agree regarding the level design. It was sadly one of the biggest things we sacrificed in order to complete the game for the jam.

I really enjoyed this game! I thought the art and style were really great, and I thought about this game for several days after I played it the first time, where I had been thwarted in the dream level. I'm glad I came back to it and finished it today. It was really a nice little gem to find the in the jam. It was pleasantly difficult for a platformer. Whenever I found a new bird doing some new behaviour, it felt like you were gently guiding me to figure out a new skill, like crouching or moving back and forth while hovering. I think from a game design perspective, that was really well done.

The only minor constructive criticism I would give is that the text below the game never faded to actual transparency for me. I could always still see the last line of text in between scenes. Otherwise, the only other thing I wanted was more! I wanted to see more of the Victorian times in this cute pixel style and maybe explore a few more levels. Anyways, good job!

This was a cool looking game with a great idea! It reminds me of Overcooked, but with a bit of a twist. Especially, I thought the art direction, animations, and environment were big positives for the game. It felt well thought out, and the single room was a smart way to focus on mechanics and gameplay. I think this is a pretty strong game + premise.

Personally, this isn't the type of game I would typically play, so consider my below feedback with that in mind and a relatively large grain of salt :).

I really struggled to win the game, but not in a way that I felt I could learn a better strategy and eventually win every time. There were attempts where about 15+ zombies entered the shack, and there didn't seem like there was a way to win when that happened.  I ended up only having a successful run because one of my minions got stuck on the wood pile and was able to brew the potion from there. I really wanted something besides the crystal ball to alert me that a new wave of zombies was coming to better prepare. However, this could all be because I am very bad at this type of game and may be perfectly suitable for your target audience.

One thing that would have improved my experience drastically is for the minions to have an attack mode. Once I right click a zombie to target them, I would expect my minion to keep firing until the zombie is dead or they run out of mana. But in my game, they did not. I had to constantly right click to attack, which made it really difficult to multitask during a zombie wave.  Minions also couldn't both gather wood at once, even though it looked like they were. Once wood collection finished, only one minion would have any wood. I'd have to restart the process for the other minion afterwards. This may have been intentional, but it wasn't obvious to me that it was.

As others said, my characters often got stuck on each other, which required some extra clicking to herd to the correct station. Better navigation routes would likely fix this problem relatively easily. In addition, I had several instances of something going awry with colliders where the witch or a zombie would end up in the ceiling. Once there, they were stuck until something else bumped into them.

Overall, though, I was pretty determined to beat it, so you scratched some itch in me to play your game more. So good job to everyone on the team! This really feels like a game on its way to being something really cool once it's streamlined a bit more. 

Thanks so much! I really appreciate the comments, and I'm glad you felt some suspense when playing the game (and am really glad to hear your tried out the brightness setting!). 

Your softlock is really interesting, and that is a great consideration for level design in the future. I'm also going to work harder next time on teaching the player how to play the game. It was a realisation we had coming to the end that it was a bit unclear how to actually play the game, but we didn't foresee the true impact of that until getting more feedback. 

P.S. your game is beautiful, and I really enjoyed the art style. I'm going to be posting to it sometime this weekend when I get more time to finish it.

Thanks for all the feedback! I'm glad you were able to play and am really interested in your comments on left-handedness. This was definitely an oversight, but I would have assumed both Shift keys to sprint. Next time, I'll be sure to incorporate that. I assume that also made the jumping a nightmare (although thankfully not required). What key is good for that? Keypad 0 or Enter?

I fully agree with regards to the information presented to the player. Hindsight is 20-20 they say! I've played your game and am working on some feedback. 

Yeah! I think faster zombie would have made it scarier!

Hey! Thanks so much for playing and giving feedback on the game. I think it's a really good idea to have the demon tell you the controls the first time instead of after. It seems like a tutorial would have been good to have! And also apologies on the lighting, I agree that it is both too dark and too light at the same time. We tried to provide a brightness setting to compensate for the overly dark areas, especially on the stairs. The material/shader on them seemed determined to be dark.

If you're curious, the monsters are meant to be passengers from the train your were on, so the descriptions are what the player remembers about them before they died. You get a journal entry by creeping behind the monsters, and that is what triggers the light under the monster. 

The game is ultimately meant (although it doesn't do well at telling you) to be a puzzle game, where you connect the hints with the passenger descriptions. So the description of the person who wears great jackets that the player envies matches the hint for 'can only think of green' because of being green with envy. They may have been a bit too subtle :P.

Anyways, thanks again for taking the time to play!

That was a roller coaster ride! Took me quite a while to find the fourth ending. The game was truly chaotic, but I think that was intentional. I think the format of the game was really creative and fun to work through. I think some of the HTML (links, modal windows, etc) had some issues. There were some YouTube videos that didn't work for me, places that seems like there should be links, but nothing happened when they were clicked (e.g. ending 3). Still, though, was a pretty fun adventure :P

I thought this was an interesting game to play! It reminded vaguely of 999 in it's over-the-top-ness, but in a good way. Seems like an interesting engine as well! I hadn't heard of it, but it looks like it can make some interesting results. I think the branching story and different outcomes is a cool concept. The main critique I have is that the sound in the game didn't play, which I think would have really added to the experience.

I thought this was a bit of fun once I figured out the timing with the space bar. I enjoyed the creature sprites in the game and thought that the concept was pretty good. I understand you did this relatively quickly, but I think that having some effect when you attacked would be really helpful. That could be just a sprite overlay of the hitbox rather than an entire animation. Good job! 

Thanks so much for playing! I'm glad you had a good time--it was fun seeing a video of someone else getting attacked by the zombies :D

That's really good to know though! The controls are just keyboard for movement/actions and mouse to point the camera, but you do have to take your hand of the mouse somewhat frequently, so I think it's a valid point. :) Thanks and I look forward to trying your game out

Hi @RicoTV, thanks for playing the game! I really appreciate the positive feedback. Do you mind sharing your setup so I can consider it next time we're making a game? The game also supports controller input, but not in the menus, so it wasn't documented in the build. 

Thanks! I hope you enjoy it. Let us know what you think :)

Thank you for playing and for the feedback! I agree the squares aren't very clear. I didn't think I had time to make sprites for them to better indicate what they do. In addition to increasing the score, they also act as player buffs. I don't think they're very well balanced and should have better buffs for the player. For example, the yellow square is supposed to increase speed, but the drop rate is so infrequent and the buff so small, it is hardly noticeable at all.

Also, that's a very good point re: eventually losing. I had designed it that way so that it would definitely end at some point, but it doesn't really give control of the ending to the player. Thanks :)

I thought this was very fun and challenging! I really enjoyed the art style and the way the player moved. It looks very polished :)

Thank you :)

This was a really interesting game mechanic! I enjoyed the aesthetics and the gameplay. It did take me a second to figure out how to cast the spells, but other than that I enjoyed it. I think it would be interesting if there were different enemies with different weaknesses and if the dice randomised after shooting.

Thank you very much for the feedback and playing the game :) I agree the randomness of the powerups should probably be tweaked (and maybe improved bonuses a bit as well). 

This is really clever!