Hi, community!

I’m working on my second game while participating in the Save Our World Game Dev Championships. I’m competing in the solo 24+ category. I want to share my process for two reasons. First, rereading my posts from my previous project was very helpful in planning this much longer jam. I had forgotten some of the processes I used (it was almost a year ago), and those blog posts were my only surviving notes. Second, I hope to gain insights from the community that might help me with this project.

The game will be a cozy point-and-click story/puzzle inspired by my personal experiences. I started by choosing the tools I would use.

Managing work: I’m using Trello. I’ve built the main board for the project and plan to work in one-week sprints. I believe that setting a weekly goal to deliver some increment will keep me motivated and focused over the five-month period. I have a backlog, tasks for the current sprint, and will focus on grooming and planning on the weekends. I chose Trello because I have used it before and don’t want to invest time in learning new project management tools.

Game engine: I chose Unity because I want to learn it, most of my favorite games are made with it, and there will be master classes available. I plan to set it up with Visual Studio Code and Git.

Graphics: For my previous game, I used pixel art and Aseprite, which was very challenging and time-consuming. I decided not to use pixel art this time. Since I don’t have experience with other digital art techniques and programs, I did some research and decided to go with vector graphics. I chose Inkscape after watching some tutorials and trying to draw a simple sansevieria plant. I enjoyed the process. Here’s an example of an ugly paper draft and what I managed to draw in 30 minutes after watching just one beginner tutorial. I think I can manage. 

UI and scene design, and assets management: I chose Figma, as I’m learning the basics for work.

I don’t yet have any ideas for the sound design. :)

My goal for this week is to create a title screen with a start button that takes the player to a screen with the first asset, which will be a gameplay area placeholder.

I hope to update this topic every Sunday!

Week 2 Update

I now have a much clearer vision of the game mechanics. The main screen/board will have two states/views. Items will be placed on this scene, and when a player clicks on an item, a mini-game or short animation will open. Completing one mini-game will unlock new mini-games, with the flow of available games a story will be told.

Here’s what I focused on this week:

• Creating tasks in Trello: I wanted to get a better grasp of how much work needs to be done. I have over 40 tasks, most of which are general and need to be split into more detailed ones.
• Learning Inkscape: I made significant progress just by learning the pen tool and gradients. I used these two tutorials: Lines and Gradients. Here is the result of tracing over a random sansevieria plant photo. 
• Learning the basics of Unity: I achieved my goal for the week. Below is a little demo gif.

For next week, my goals are to:

• Code the switching between the two states of the main board.
• Figure out how to open mini-game scenes.
• Define what the MVP for my game should include, particularly in terms of the number of mini-games.

I look forward to sharing more updates next Sunday!

Week 3 Update

This week, I managed to achieve all my goals, which makes me very happy. The hardest part was learning Unity. Before starting this project, I only knew a bit about navigating the graphical interface, creating sprites, and some basic scripting, such as creating serialized fields and swapping object sprites.

Here are the challenges I worked on this week, from hardest to easiest:

• Managing clicks over the apartment layout: The biggest challenge was dealing with overlapping room colliders. I ended up creating my own raycast-based script to find the object with the highest order in the topmost sorting layer from the array that Physics2D.RaycastAll returns. To connect this to the room state logic, I created a super simple game events system by following this tutorial.
• Instantiating prefabs: I learned how to instantiate prefabs so I can open a modal with specific content when clicking on different triggers. These modals will open mini-games and animations.
• Switching between apartment layouts: I achieved this by activating and deactivating objects containing all the rooms.

Here's a little demo gif below.

My Unity challenges for next week are:

• Adding a tool to manage hovering on elements.
• Creating a UI for closing the game.
• Starting to think about the logic of the main game loop, where the player progresses by solving different challenges that open in modals.

I also spent some time learning Inkscape. I found a cool method for learning: 

• I watch a tutorial and follow all the steps (lots of pausing and going back). 
• I try to do my own drawing (still tracing photos) using the skills from the video. 

This week, I learned how to create complex shapes from simple ones by cutting and editing paths. To sum up all I have learned, I drew my favorite stim toy. Maybe it will be in the game, maybe not; I’m still trying to figure out the art style for my game.

Stay tuned for next week’s update!

Week 4 Update

I’m grateful to my past self for deciding to have a Trello board for each week of the jam. I sat down today thinking I had accomplished very little, especially since I struggled with art in the latter half of the week. However, when I looked at my Trello, I realized I actually completed what I planned to. I finished the logic for hovering over rooms (though I still need to adjust the pivot point of the sprites) and moved errand triggers inside the rooms. Additionally, the close button logic is already in place.

I also have a draft of the main game loop logic on my blackboard, and I will focus on coding this next. I plan to measure in-game time by the number of tasks completed, change the rooms' appearance accordingly, and spawn new tasks.

The second coding challenge this week will be creating the first mini-game. It won't be anything innovative, as it will be based on the 15 puzzle but with an image. This will give me the opportunity to tell a story through the pictures.

As for art, I created a sketch of the apartment rooms on paper (I’m not satisfied with the proportions of the current sprites). 

I gathered tons of reference images and made some decisions on style: I won't use outlines, I’ll keep my color palette small, and I’ll avoid using gradients much. Unfortunately, I made zero progress on character design. :( I decided to take a break and focus on completing an entire Inkscape course next week.

Next update on Sunday! I can not wait as in July I'm starting a long leave at my job and I can shift all my focus to this project.

Week 5 Update

This week, I didn't have enough time to focus much on the main project. However, I started building a small game featuring sliding puzzles. I plan to put it on itch.io as a separate project. I think it's a good exercise in putting together a complete game, including menus, sounds, and publishing. I hope to wrap this up within the week. Little demo below. The game will involve players solving puzzles that are images on a wall of travel photos.

Stay tuned for next week’s update!