By the end of August Cartoon Network did a game jam here in Buenos Aires, so I went there. I got late signed an agreement that said “Turner and Cartoon Network will lend you their IPs for you to make a game, you can only showcase said game at certain designated places. The end”. Afterwards I started checking groups out and ended up joining the group made up mosty of people I already knew, they were making a brawling game.
What we wanted to do:
- 2D super smash like game in which two characters (Finn and Marceline) push each other out of a platform, you can push by walking or push farther with attacks.
- It will be a multiplayer game.
- Some random enemies will spawn and contribute to the pushing characters out fun.
- We will have joypad support.
What we got:
- 2D super smash like game in which two characters push each other out of a platform by attacking. Each character has 3 lives.
- We got multiplayer and joypad support.
- There were random worms that you could hit to get and extra life.
- The random enemies were scrapped, but might be added in the future.
- Skeletons who watch the match in the background.
- An awesome artist who made all the character and enemy annimations.
- Another awesome artist who made the game intro screen and the background.
- There was a guy who made music with a gameboy and a ds, he was in our team, so the music is great.
- Several bugs to fix.
Mistakes and lessons learned:
- Don’t try to fix things from outside your area, when you still have work to do from your own area of expertise. The work that you know how to do comes first.
- When you go to the jam aiming to have fun and with clear objectives, you have fun and get to sleep.
- Dropbox can and will fail when you least expect it and Drive will suck in comparison. Always have a pendrive handy.
You can play the game here, I will update the post once I’m done bug fixing.