I know I set out this new year saying I would maybe try to make less projects, but this year is really turning into a year of making more games because I love making games and just keep coming up with new ideas. So let me introduce my next game dev project: #NoHacks (the title is currently a work-in-progress; I'm unsure if this is the final title)
This will be a series of blog posts to document my process as I go about creating this game!
As you may know, I'm a huge fan of game jams, so when I found out that Gotcha Gotcha Games was hosting an official RPG Maker Game Jam this year, I knew I wanted to enter! The last time they held an official game jam was in 2022 when I created Spirits of Combination Village for the Indie Game Making Contest: Rebirth. I decided to participate in that jam pretty last minute and it all happened after I went through some serious medical procedures, so it was kind of my way to get back into projects during my recovery. I had a lot of fun working on that project and received a lot of positive feedback, so it made me want to enter another event like that.
So with the RPG Maker Game Jam this year, they announced the theme about a month early. They mentioned that we could start brainstorming ideas and coming up with concepts, as long as we didn't start the actual development until the start date. So I decided to take full advantage of that! After all, this jam is also not the best timing for me because I'm out of town for a full week in the middle of it and my brother's out of town towards the end of it, so it really doesn't line up great. But I wanted to enter to some degree anyways.
So I started out by coming up with ideas! The initial brainstorming took place for hours one night when I was laying in bed and couldn't sleep. I wrote ideas in a Discord channel to myself and just couldn't stop thinking about ideas and what I wanted to do with this game. It was a productive night, but I didn't get a lot of sleep that night because it was literally keeping me up all night with the excitement for my new project.
Then I drew some quick thumbnail sketches to jot down some of my first ideas. This was just ideas for different UI and menus. I came up with these to at least start thinking about visuals and what it would look like in some way.
From there, I started to come up with a more solid plan. My brother expressed interest in joining me even though we both will have limited time. So I put together a Google Doc similar to our GGJ docs to start organizing ideas, laying out a basic schedule, and throwing some inspirations in there. It was a good way to organize and collect all of the ideas I just threw in a Discord channel so it was actually readable and I could pitch the idea better to him.
Then I created a Notion page to further plan out the schedule and tasks needed. These are still pretty rough, but I'm planning about 1 week to get the basic mechanics, 1 week for art, and 1 week for playtesting. And then obviously there are other things that need to get done (like story) somewhere in there, but for GGJ projects, that's usually a pretty quick piece that we throw in there towards the end once the core mechanics are there. I was thinking it might be something I can casually work on while I'm out of town if I'm feeling up to working on it at all, but we'll see how that goes!
My brother and I decided we're gonna meet to work on it for one day, but that he probably won't have a lot of time to dedicate to it. So it might be more of my project with him just helping out with some parts.
I also planned out some more ideas for the story and gameplay with a rough sequence of events. I did a few sketches for puzzle ideas and how they could fit into the story as well.
I'm sure these level designs will change once I'm actually developing the game, but I wanted to put some ideas on paper!
And that's everything from before the jam officially started! I made sure to do a lot of planning to make up for the week that I'll be out in the middle of the jam. This way I'll be able to make use of all of the time I do have during the official dates! Nothing has been started in the game itself/I haven't made a project file yet, but I did at least do most of the planning/design docs so I can start developing right away.
This post was technically written before the official March 20th start date. This project will be my focus for the next month, so I'll probably have 1-2 more blog posts at least where I detail the rest of my process as I create this game. I'm excited to start developing when the jam officially starts!
No comments:
Post a Comment