Post Marathon Jam
Background
Over the last month, I have been working on this project as a part of the r/SoloDevelopment hosted Marathon Jam. The “theme” of the jam was to make meaningful progress on an existing (or new) project. It was a very exciting theme as most jams are exclusively built around new projects.
In an effort to document the state of the game at the start of the jam, I created a dev blog post. Feel free to read through it but here is the video I made to show what I had at that time.
In addition here are the goals I set out to achieve in the course of the game.
Goals
- Create an “endless mode” that randomizes lawns with items, houses, etc that focuses on a scoring system over the requirements in the existing levels
- Use the existing levels as tutorials for the new endless mode
- Update the UI to adopt a more phone app style than a web portal aesthetic (story related)
- Implement a dialog system to use as a framing for each tutorial level
Stretch Goals
- Tweak some of the tutorial levels
- Add a bunch of additional items and houses for the endless mode
Postmortem
Purely based on the above goals it was mostly a success as you can see in the video below, which mimics the one above.
Here were some of the goals I did get done.
Revamped Main Menu
I really like the way the “Phone App” gig-work aesthetic worked out. It was the change I worked on the most and I think it shows.
Endless mode
Randomly generated levels in the “Job Mode” complete with scoring:
Tutorial Levels
I think these work fine as is, but with the missing dialogue system,it doesn’t have the same impact I was hoping for. As a temporary measure, I did add these “Aunt Nancy’s Tips” which at least gives some context.
Missing
Of the goals I set out to do the only one I didn’t get to was the dialogue. It is a big miss, but I am happy I removed it from scope. It gave me more opportunities to sit with the changes I did make and iterate on them.
Conclusion
Overall I think this Jam was a success, I accomplished a lot of what I wanted to do, and while it is still not a complete game, I feel much closer to one.
Files
Get One Day Mower
One Day Mower
Status | In development |
Author | yammosk |
Genre | Simulation |
Tags | Arcade, landscaping, lawn |
More posts
- Going from a minimal game to a marathonJun 26, 2021
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