The jam on the horizon

In 2018 I took part in my first Adventure Game Jam. It was a great experience, even though I had very little time next to my stressful day-job. I did it anyway. I didn’t end up with anything playable, but it reminded me of what I love about game dev.

A year later I did it again, this time with a playable visual novel-type game based on one of my first short stories (of 13 years earlier).
It was about a first person protagonist trying to find meaning in his nightly strives through a big city after spending the day in a mind-numbing job, alone at home or riding a train between the two. Sounds depressing? That’s pretty much how the protagonist felt, too. But he didn’t know how to break out of his loops.
A very gloomy story that was, even if it had what I felt was a silver lining.

As an adventure game it didn’t work well and the visual novel approach was hidden behind a point-and-click interface.
I had written my own little adventure engine inside of Unity, because I wanted full control over how the story was presented. So a lot of the limited jam time went into that.
The second part of the game was almost pure story, not much interaction. I ran out of time, so I figured that I wanted to tell the story at least.
A few fellow jammers wrote positive comments on the mood and the story, but from the way the interface worked, they didn’t expect a visual novel and they wanted more interaction.

Now I see that there was not much welcoming about the game. It was too heavy. Sure, there was some dark humor in it, if you enjoy that, but there has to be something inviting to even get somebody to play the game in the first place.
To tell a story with a heavy conotation, it’s much better to do it in a light mood.

In 2020 I didn’t do a game jam, because the theme was fixed on staying at home and I didn’t want to »jam« about that.

The next AdvJam is right ahead. It will start on 7th of May and run for two weeks.
Guess what game I’ll focus on? Exodus terram of course!
I’ve spend the last weeks brainstorming and plotting and now I can’t wait to actually get started.
There will be more behind the scenes posts about the jam.
It’s also a great way to get the word about the game out there.