I recently had an experience I just have to write you about: the first ScoreSpace game and gamer jam.
This is the first jam that I know of that rewards not just game developers but also the gamers who earn the top high score for each of the top three games. It follows an easy schedule: the first weekend of each month there will be a 72 hour jam (Friday morning to Sunday night) to create the games. Starting Monday morning, players can test the games, submit feedback, and the devs can send out bug fixes for software stability (though nothing in the game itself can be added to). When the clock strikes midnight on that Thursday night, the winning games are announced and it’s the gamers turn. They have the next 72 hours to race up the leaderboards and come Monday morning, three victors reign supreme.
For the first go around, the November jam started a little early (October 26th actually) and lasted until about mid-November just to give the process a bit of extra time for feedbacks. I have to say that it was one of the coolest things I’ve been able to be a part of online because of the jam’s Discord server. Although I didn’t get to participate as a developer, I was able to witness everyone who was helping each other with bug fixes, with coding tips and tricks, and just a great, general sense of friendship and camaraderie. When it came time for the gaming, it was like an arcade of teenagers egging each other on, sharing tips, and smack talking each other to see who could go the farthest, the fastest, and blow the most stuff up. In the month since the jam wrapped up, I have to admit that I’ve missed it and I eagerly look forward to January 4th when the second ScoreSpace Jam starts up. (The jam’s creator, Khaalid B., and the majority of people in the discord all voted on waiting until January to hold the second jam so that it wouldn’t have to compete against the Jam of all Jams, Ludum Dare.)
Scoring for the games was done by averaging the community ratings across 5 categories (Theme, Aesthetics, Sound, Gameplay, and Overall) and into a final “Overall” average score that determined their ultimate placement.
For each of the games I asked the developers 4 questions, the answers to which I’ll post below my own thoughts and comments on the games so starting with the lone honorable mention of this jam, let’s work our way up through the games!
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Honorable Mention: unnamed
Developer: Gmanicus
(https://twitter.com/Coresoul_Games/
https://www.instagram.com/gman1cus/ )
Comments
I hope to see Gmanicus in January’s jam; he had to drop out after facing an issue with the Defold game engine itself and managed to get help directly from the Defold team but, unfortunately, that didn’t leave him enough time to complete the jam.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
The game I had come up with was heavily inspired by Capsule. I’m an enthusiast of very atmospheric games, those that pull you into the game and take advantage your imagination, and I have always scored my best in that category. I wanted to create something like Capsule, except in space.
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
Not necessarily. I ended up not being able to participate early into the Jam because of an engine bug, which was promptly fixed by the engine devs. They were super helpful and apologetic that I had to abort because of the issue.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
Yes actually. There was no score system asset available for the engine I used, so I had to experiment with the one server-side system I knew: Google Sheets. I was able to hack a system together with encouragement from this Jam, and can now polish and use it for future projects.
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
Definitely! I believe my idea is fit for the market, and I want to turn it into a full-scale project when I have the time.
7th Place: Invasion of the Aminiboids
Developer: Galo
Summary:
A vertical platform game where you ostensibly use a jetpack to jump up to the next one while not falling into the death cloud below and avoiding the Aminiboid creatures that jump down from higher platforms.
Comments:
Graphically, it has a beautiful background, the player character is well done and original, and enemies have a definite vibe of space invaders, just more modern. Audio is a bit annoying after a while but fits it easily with the “space“ theme. Ok, it gets really annoying fairly quickly.
Gameplay is simple with Jump on the space bar and Left and Right being the two respective arrow keys but there’s no instructions anywhere and most of the menu options on the main screen don’t do anything (probably left in from a template, I assume).
A good concept where I think the developer unfortunately spent more time on presentation than performance.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
Metal Slug.
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
Movement system, create an actual level, and a point system based on time.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
I learned to design the level first, after that make the art.
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
I’m moving on.
6th place: Out of Fuel
Developer: Princemarioone
(https://twitter.com/PrinceJones33)
Summary:
A vertical scroller where you, a spinning rocketship, avoid falling groups of stars by moving the mouse around.
Comments:
I like the contrast visually of the bright red spaceship, the yellow stars, and dark background.
The gameplay itself was solid with good response to controls and good collision detections but unfortunately there just wasn’t much to the game. The high score function was missing so there’s no way to know how well you did, though, the main challenge isn’t so much needing skill to avoid the stars – the groupings usually have several spots more than large enough to get through comfortably – the main issue is how long until you get bored with the same movements and lose the game by mental attrition.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
Me and the creator of ScoreSpace were friends that met at a local indie game festival, so when he told me about the game jam I just had to join. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of college and I really had no time to really work on it until…2 hours before the jam ended . Luckily, I’ve made games in under 1 hour before so I knew I could produce something before time was up.
I ended up almost remaking a different game I made under an hour before called Lazy Spikes just with a few extra adjustments, assets, and controls.
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
In the end I worked on the game until I was almost late for my classes and it’s kinda been on hold since then. I WISH I added the actual controls anywhere on the page, people don’t really know you control the ship by dragging it around. I also want to make it playable on the actual page without downloading it as well, just for a quick and fun experience.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
In the end, I really learned more about game jams. Making a game under 2 hours is stressful af, other submissions are gonna look amazing so don’t let that discourage you (Blazing aces was amazing), and that in the end that this is all for the fun and joy of game development.
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
If I have the time I’ll try and make it actually playable to the general public.
5th Place: We Need Some Space
Developer: Necrobata
(https://twitter.com/Necrobata)
Summary:
I think you’re supposed to use the mouse to move a colored ball and keep it from hitting any of the several others that bounce around on the screen.
Comments:
It looks really pretty, and it would be GREAT for a screensaver but collisions stop after the first play. I can’t figure out the commands/controls for the first play. Current high score is 3.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
The theme inspired me directly, a synthwave track and a shooter I was at inspired to work on my idea.
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
I would have come with more coding experience. Maybe teaming up.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
Experience, cool networking.
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
I might someday work it onto something better, but for now, its off.
4th Place: Terminal Velocity
Developer: Koala Squad Games
(https://twitter.com/squad_koala / https://koalasquad.wordpress.com)
Summary:
You control a square on the surface of a planet, surrounded by a number of other planets and other squares, that launches itself in the direction of your mouse when you click. Hit and destroy the other squares before they hit and destroy you.
Comments:
The minimalist black and white world makes it easy even for someone colorblind like me to see when another square turns red and is about to launch itself at you. Gameplay is fast to learn, fast paced, and surprisingly challenging; easy to learn mechanics, tricky to “git gud” at. Death is frequent but in the best way possible: you just want to get revenge and so you hit “play again”.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
My inspiration was literally just messing around until my idea solidified. I started with a half baked idea about making a puzzle game where you had to click the opposite direction of your character to fling him anywhere and you had to complete certain objectives in time/launch limits. Sorta like a cross between top down angry birds and golf. Anyway, I slept on it, realized that this was a terrible idea that I had no idea how to make, and realized that I could still salvage something interesting from the mechanics of the original. I flipped the direction that the player travels in and added planets, and then the idea for the game I had at the end of the jam took hold. I added enemies, made a velocity based kill/death system, and that was that.
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
I would have liked to support multiple resolutions, but UI takes a lot of time to fine tune, and the mechanics just didn’t work as well at 1920×1080, especially since the camera would always make it really hard to see enemies coming at different resolutions.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
I learned a few things. First, it’s really important to choose a really, REALLY simple and easy to execute mechanic when you aren’t working with a large team, because tuning to make it fun is going to take a lot of time. Second, juice is THE MOST CRITICAL aspect of the game. If the game isn’t made fun and feels dull and lifeless, it’s unlikely to succeed (unless you’re Tetris. Or Pacman. Or Galaga)
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
I’m going to keep working on it and release it on Google play, but there aren’t any major changes I’m going to make. I’ve added support for cosmetic purchases with ingame currency and ads so that I can monetize it, and I’m going to add different modes (such as higher difficulties, flat worlds, etc.), but the core gameplay is going to remain almost exactly the same. The only major change I’ve made is to more fully support the combo time slowing mechanic, which was originally a bug and as such very haphazard.
3rd place: Space
Developer: Gift of Death
(https://twitter.com/GiftOfDeath_)
Summary:
You control a simple white “ship” using the arrow keys to move around the screen, shooting enemies that appear from the top of the screen and trying to avoid their bullets.
Comments:
It’s very much an old-school arcade style game, almost like a cross of Tempest and Space Invaders with the geometric shapes of the enemies and Centipede with the way they march down the screen. There’s a particular enemy that shows up in groups of 3, fires shots quickly, and overall is incredibly hard to avoid, leading to a single group of them being able to quickly end your run. I still found myself playing this over and over and look forward to any future iterations of it.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
Not much to it, just your old regular auto scrolling space shooter. I did want to keep the graphics simple but easy to distinguish between enemy types, and got a bit of a flashback to an old GameMaker freeware game “Terav”, that used similar graphics style of colourful geometric shapes. The gameplay was very different though.
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
Not spend about half of the working hours on menus and building the online highscore system. The gameplay leaves much to desire.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
I have a decent online highscore system (learnt a lot building it!), and a somewhat easy to port rebindable controls system which I can both re-use, so something came out of it!
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
I’d really like to, I never finished making a schmup (or many games to begin with) so that would be nice. I probably will if I have the time.
2nd place: Space X-Ploration
Developer: PigDev
Summary:
Using your arrow keys to fly and the spacebar to fire a laser, you control a spaceship around dangerous space clouds, red dots that try to collide with you, and “mine” planets for points.
Comments:
This is honestly one of my two favorite games in this jam. The game starts with a lot of difficulty but the upgrade system allows for a lot of reward and a lot of replayability. The controls are a little difficult and require a lot of finesse and sometimes luck but definitely something you get used to and better at. Graphics are beautiful; with bold, distinctive colors and well defined shapes, the screen is never “cluttered” no matter how many things are visible all at the same time. Like old flash games where you can incrementally upgrade things like health, thrust, turning speed, etc, this is going to be one of those games that I can come back to when I want to play “something different.” If this had had music and/or effects I think it may well have come in 1st.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
Well the gamejam theme basically. But we did a small research on the market to search for references and we found Galatic Bulwark which inspired a lot. And in the meantime when I was searching for references for the art direction I found this(edited)
(image created by Protium Design)
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
It sure is, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do Tilemap Autotiling, you know using bitmasks etc…we lost about 5h in that, which could be used to make sound effects and the background music, which was the main critics in our games. And the final result, which doesn’t use autotilling, is way better, we used particles to the current nebula effect, which imo is way better than it would be using autotilling.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
Sure! Since I teamed up with a friend, Guilherme, which was handling backend features such as the procedural generation, some mechanics and most importantly the leaderboard, I could focus on the visual aspects of the game, especially particles. I learned a lot especially on Godot’s resource system, which allowed for a good creating of assets for further games, such as Fire Gradient, Smoke Screen particles, and much more, even a new cool class we called LaserBeam2D, which I’ll use a lot in my next projects
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
Well I have this project for the next year to work for 3 months in 4 of my itch.io’s projects. And this is a strong candidate for that, so yes, probably!
1st Place: Blazin’ Aces
Developer: Slick_Ramen
(https://twitter.com/SlickestRamen)
Summary:
A classic vertical scrolling shmup set in space. Controls are A for left, D for right, and W for fire. Shoot the enemy rockets before they crash into or shoot you first.
Comments:
This was my favorite game of the jam for 3 main reasons: 1) I’m a sucker for well done vertical scrolling shmups (no matter how mediocre or even bad I may be at them); 2) the amount of detail in the quality of the game’s graphics using only black and 4, maybe 5 shades of pink is amazing; and 3) the music and effects fit perfectly. This just does not feel like a quick, over-the-weekend game. This feels like a full fledged game, or at least the demo first level of one. Not that it’s perfect- enemies that you missed in the previous wave can sometimes appear behind you and take a health away almost entirely without time for you to react, a way to regain health would certainly be nice, maybe even power ups like a shield or additional weapons- but it certainly feels like a demo for a game that you’d pay $5-10 for on Steam.
Although I wish it had an upgrade or bonus item system, scrolling shooters like this are a gaming guilty pleasure of mine. I love to play them but I’m rarely, rarely actually any good at them.
Developer Q&A:
1) What inspired the game you made/how did you come up with that particular game?
Well… I was working on a dogfighting game similar to Luftrausers. I didn’t really like where the game was going, but thought I may aswell just continue. Sadly, my musician had to quit due to some personal reasons and I figured that I should probably restart the game. This probably wasn’t a wise thing to do but it felt right. I believe that I had a little over a day at that point and decided to get to work. Because of the lack of time, the final product had very few features, but it had enough to be playable. Because the theme was SPACE, I figured I should create a space shoot ’em up, because they’re really easy to do. I think I was inspired by a game that I’d seen on twitter. The game was also a shoot ’em up, which is probably another reason why I created one.
2) Is there anything you’d have done differently?
I would’ve maybe started working on the game a little earlier than I did. That would’ve given me loads more time to add more features / polish.
3) Is there anything you’re taking away from this jam?
Definitely. I made sure that I managed my time properly this jam which I haven’t done a lot of in the past which will help me in the future with developing games and staying on schedule.
4) Are you going to keep working on it or are you moving on?
I think I’ll come back to it at some point, but am looking at moving on to work on other projects and continue to learn GML, such as learning 3D.
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Thank you so much to everyone involved in this jam: KB for creating it, the devs for making the games, and the other gamers for the great time I had competing against you guys.
The next jam is starting on January 4th, 2019, though this time over on Game Jolt. Even if you’re reading this after the jam’s started, there’s already at least twice as many devs and gamers getting ready for it as of the time of writing (December 31st, 2018). I think I might really have my work cut out for me with this next one.
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