Game Jam Postmortem Devlog

Hey all, this devlog will go over the process of creating Mission Simulated, the concept demo we made for the GoedWare Game Jam.

How did we come up with the idea?

As soon as the themes "Alternate Reality" and "Time is Power" were released, we had these ideas:

Alternate Reality: A mission that could only be completed by testing it repeatedly (kind of like how Doctor Strange uses the time stone).

Time is power: Because the time available to finish the assignment is restricted, the player must discover the shortest time possible.

We established our mechanics as a 2D platformer with turn-based cards, where time is the currency and cards control movement, based on the two themes. We thought this combination was novel because we couldn't recall many games with similar mechanisms in the past. (Please let us know if you know of any that are similar.)

How was the development process?

We are a two-person team, thus we end up clearly dividing our time between programming and art. We made the common game jam mistake of scoping too broadly.  Instead of developing a single level, we began by constructing a structure that can accommodate numerous levels. This, of course, left us with little time to test the game's playability. So we're calling the game a "concept demo" for the time being because we displayed the mechanics and art style but didn't put up many playable or exciting things.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it was a pleasant experience. We are grateful to GoedWare for hosting this jam event, from which we learned a lot. We weren't used to working with Github in Unity, so this jam was really beneficial. This was good preparation for us, and we may continue with the project in the future.