Hello! Yesterday was the first day of WPI's TouchTomorrow game jam. As such, we had our Kickoff, where we brainstormed game ideas before downselecting to one. We then began work on the assets of the game and some organizational tasks.

Now that we have a solid game idea, we can begin writing more detailed updates than those we've been posting on Twitter. I want to share as much as possible about our process in creating this game, both to inform anyone who's interested and to serve as a record for us to look back on--hence this first post to our new itch.io page! Documenting our daily progress will certainly help us refine our schedule in future game jams, and maybe someone else can learn from our successes and mistakes, too.

Kickoff

We structure our Kickoff based on our FRC team's Kickoffs. Yesterday morning, we got together on a Discord voice call at 11:50, ten minutes before the prompt was revealed. We watched the WPI Game Jam Discord sever in anticipation, until finally, at 12:00, the game prompt was posted: "RETURN." After seeing the prompt, we split into groups of three to brainstorm ideas. Once each group fleshed out a game concept, we all came together to present our ideas and choose our favorite.

What we ended up going with was Return to Reality--a game about escaping your dreams. The idea is that the player traverses five surreal levels that become increasingly nightmarish. They eventually realize they are in a dream, which allows them to break out of it and return to the real world. As for the genre, we decided to create a platformer again for the sake of time; our software team already knows how to program a game like this, and a 2D side-scroller seems like the easiest to create assets for.

After settling on this idea, we began to work out all the details that we'd need to begin working on the art, music, and sound design. For example, we had to decide how many levels there would be, what themes they'd have, what size the tiles would be, et cetera. We have all of these details written down in a Google Doc on our Shared Drive for future reference. The only decisions left to be made are the level designs and what specific assets will look like.

Our Kickoff lasted until around 4 PM.

Artwork

As mentioned, our artists began working on the assets right away. We actually already have one tileset and one background done, with a lot of progress on sprites as well. We're aiming to complete all assets by Friday, the 11th, so we're in a pretty good spot right now. Check out the aforementioned tileset and background, created by artists Mason and Caitlyn R. respectively, below.

Music

We also made some progress with the music, although we're mainly in the brainstorming phase here. We're working on the level 1 theme first, as we want the other songs to build off of it to create a unified soundtrack. Like the artwork, we're aiming to have the music completed by Friday. Our music director is going to be working closely with our musicians throughout the week to ensure that their songs match the atmosphere of the game.

Organization

After our Kickoff meeting, I created a spreadsheet of every task we need to complete. They're sorted into categories based on what team is in charge of them: game design, programming, art, music, and sound design. When someone completes a task, they are to come onto the spreadsheet and highlight that task.

Examples of tasks that are written here are "design level 1," "program level 1," "create art of player walking," "create start menu music," et cetera. It goes into a fair amount of detail so that we know exactly what still needs to be done.

This is something we did during the previous game jam, as well. I find that it really helps to keep us organized and remind us of ongoing tasks. It's easy to forget little details and overlook small tasks; having a dedicated spreadsheet prevents us from doing so and also helps me keep track of when tasks are finished. I like knowing how long certain tasks take so that I can adjust our project schedule for future game jams.

I also worked on creating the file structure for our GitHub repository. Having a place for every type of file makes it easier to find what we're looking for while programming.

That's about it for this update! We'll keep working hard and issuing updates here on itch.io!

Best,

Cierra O.

Producer

8-bit Falcons