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[meno]

Two developers, one week, what is possible?
We want to answer this question by having the most productive week of our lifes

A friend and i are doing this week a one week game jam and we want the game design to be community driven.
Everytime a important decision has to be made, we want to ask you guys!

Jaap 'meno' Groeneveld, Marten Wirsik

one week: Goals

• Learn to work with haXe
• Develop at least one polished game
• Integrate the independent game community in the progress

Location: Northern Germany


The Project: one week of focused development
When participating in several local and global game jams, we realized that a jam is the most productive environment to get things done. Before we are starting a job and diploma thesis, we want to harvest our skills and create something rememberable.

Sunday 15-04-2012: Learning haXe and creating a basic breakout clone
16 to 20-04-2012: Developing the main Project

The Project: community driven

As the header says, we are trying to make this a community driven game project.
This means that we will have as many votes as possible to let you decide which direction the game will go. This also means that the latest version of the project, screenshots and videos will be posted as soon as possible. We will try to have the game support mobile phones and web platforms.

In this first vote, we want you to decide in what general direction the game should go by voting for a project name (all of them randomly generated via videogamena.me)

Hyper Lawnmower Takedown
Explosive Sandwich Runner
Brain-Damaged Catapult Frenzy
Samurai Pony Kid
Mystical Dwarf Psychiatrist
Return of Hamster Overload
Zombie Helicopter King
Ninja Jazz Rebellion
Inappropriate Baking Princess
__vote here__

Check out our blog one-week.eu

[PompiPompi]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think you can create a polished game in one week. I thought those jams were ment to create prototypes of games that can be later polished into a more complete game.
Also, waiting for votes is going to waste you a lot of time. People don't vote so fast, and I don't think you can afford to wait for them to finish their mornning coffee with the one week deadline you have set.
But, maybe you will have fun and something goo will come out of it, I dunno.

[meno]

obviously the game will not be as polished as games you can buy in the stores that have been developed for months.
we want the resulting game to be more than a prototype. to reach our goal we will limit the feature set to the bare minimum and focus on polishing the core mechanics.

and we are of course not waiting for the votes to come in
we are trying to have votes as soon as possible before an issue arises. if there is an decision we want the community to make, we will have it one the side while developing different parts or aspects.

the whole thing is an experiment and we want to see how far we can make it with this concept.

[PompiPompi]

Oh ok, good luck.

[ANtY]

Zombie Helicopter King

[TheApo]

Return of Hamster Overload

[Franklins Ghost]

Return of Hamster Overload

+1

[KomradeJack]

How has Inappropriate Baking Princess not already won?

[meno]

Our warmup project (a very basic breakout) is done and available to play online or native on your mac. In theory we can provide an android apk or iPhone app. It does run on our devices.


Main Project
The vote was a tie between Explosive Sandwich Runner and Return of Hamster Overload and we decided to do Explosive Sandwich Runner.
Thanks for your votes

Explosive Sandwich Runner will be a CANABALT style running game with single button controls. We want it to be available for Web, android and iOS devices.



The player controls Sandy – a grumpy sandwich. For unknown reasons her maker used a very explosive hot sauce and put a fuse between the slices.



Sandy has to collect pieces of fuse cord to prevent splattering all over the kitchen.
Sandy will run on her own but the player has to control the jumping and double jumping.



 The top of the screen will feature a fuse to show how much time the player has left to collect more fuse before Sandy explodes.

When Sandy explodes, the ingredients will splash on the display and a tomato will slowly slide down leaving a trail of sauce.

The goal of the player is to keep Sandy alive as long as possible.
One key question is open. Would it be better if the player has more control over Sandy than just jumping? Would it make sense to be able to control the speed more than just by crashing into stuff?

On our blog is also a vote to see which features would be appreciated.

We are thinking of which obstacles would be fun besides static kitchen elements. Things like a lurking cat trying to grab Sandy. We will have a poll later, if somebody has some great ideas we would be glad if you share

We are now going to draw some things and implement a physics engine before continuing the game design process.

Blogpost

[meno]

How has Inappropriate Baking Princess not already won?

i really lol'ed when is saw the name pop up but it would have been quite a challenge :D

[PompiPompi]

Sorry to interrupt again, but how is making a canablat clone nobody suggested is a "game design to be community driven".

[meno]

hm maybe the subtitle sounds a bit bigger than it actually is.

the idea is to get inspired by a randomly generated name, chosen by the community.
we present a basic concept that is easy to understand for everybody, manageable in the time given and leaves room for customization which we want to archive again with community input.

we are open for any ideas how the concept could get better or more interesting. this is just the first draft and the direction we will go for now. any input at any time can change this.

as you already noted, this community driven thing is not as easy as we want it to be but we wanted to try this kind of development in a compressed amount of time with constant feedback.

if you have an idea how we could enhance the game design or the process, feel free to tell

i would love to hear what other people imagine when they hear the game name.

[moi]

Ninja Jazz Rebellion

[PompiPompi]

Well, I thought asking the community for game mechanic ideas would make it more insteresting. And don't be afraid of "too much of a challange". It's ok to fail accomplish your goal because it's only one week.
If you are making a game that you know you will finish in one week because you have done this before. And you let minimal participation from the community, then I think you miss the point.