A Town Called Fairview: a post-mortem

A Town Called Fairview is a prototype adventure game made for 8-Bits to Infinity's Horror Humor Jam. This article contains *SPOILERS*.

As with most game jams, there was little lead time to figure out what type of game to make, much less the technical design of that game. So, as usual, I plunged in head-first with a general idea of the type of game I wanted to make.

Starting off at the beginning of the game's story, I quickly realised the project was going to require a lot of assets. 30 sprites were required just for the opening scene set in the protagonist's apartment - typically, I find, a tile-set for a game jam game might contain 50-60 sprites for the whole game. Initially this dissuaded me from continuing but I quickly put those thoughts away and pressed on. By the end, nearly 300 sprites had to be drawn for the whole game.

The second main challenge was dealing with changes to the main world. Normally, my games proceed linearly through the levels - 1,2,3,4... game over. With an adventure game you can re-visit earlier levels, but given that data is reloaded, all the content is reset. So, I needed to store changes that had been made so the player wont find an item where one had already been taken. This all occurred to me late in the project, so some things re-spawn when they shouldn't, dialogue repeats etc. I felt this didn't impact the game badly so left it for now.

The humor aspect of the design was tricky, particularly when trying to blend with horror elements. I elected to write all of the dialogue in the first-person. This gives a more personal feel for the player and provides a good base for a stream-of-consciousness narrative; the protagonist is 'thinking out loud' and making quips about the situations that occur. I can't writes jokes from scratch but can make facetious remarks about present events, so that's the type of humor that went into the game.

As someone who doesn't enjoy gory horror or occult themes, I steered the story in a more mysterious direction. The dialogue doesn't answer a lot of questions or go into any detail as to why there are machines placed in the town turning people into shadows. None of this is addressed as there wasn't time in my 5-day schedule to implement a deeper story. So, the game is presented as a taster or introduction to the town of Fairview and the events taking place there.

Given the rushed nature of development, there are a few areas of code that would need re-writing if I were to continue with the project. It may be a little while before I undertake this - once the post-submission feelings of anticlimax have subsided.

Star Jammer

Star Jammer is a run and gun platformer or Metrovania style game written for GB30 Jam. There are some fairly strict limitations, particularly with graphics: resolutions is limited to 160x144 and only 4 colours can be used at any one time.

The sounds has also been limited to 8-bit style effects and music limited to chiptunes. Other than that, the game is fairly standard-fare, the time limitation didn't allow for much experimentation and inovation.

There are 3 levels with a variety of hazards and items to pick up and use or purchase from the various shops.

I'm reasonably pleased with how this game turned out within the allowed timeframe. Most areas could be expanded upon and make for a much larger game as a whole with colour graphics and a larger resolution.

Play in browser

PicoShot

PicoShot is a small game currently being developed for LOWREZJAM 2019. The main restriction for the jam is the game has to be crammed into a tiny 64x64 pixel space, though these pixels can be scaled up afterwards, otherwise the game would be the size of a postage stamp.

Initially it was tricky to get everything working at such a low resolution but I found it’s easier to work with floating-point numbers behind the scenes and only snap to a pixel boundary when setting the position of sprites, tilemaps etc. There are probably multiple ways of doing this.

The game itself is a vertical scrolling shooter that will feel familiar to everyone who enjoys the genre. There is currently a single level to play, though it is quite hard - and there’s a boss at the end if you can get that far!

Play in browser

Escape from Mars

Escape of Mars is a roguelike of sorts set on the planet Mars. The backstory reads as follows:

You are a maintenance man working at Mars Base 1. Whilst repairing an antenna off-base you receive a garbled distress call from back at base. Something about utility robots going haywire and taking the colonists hostage. You rush back to the airlock to investigate...

Development has taken thus far a couple of weeks - significantly longer than the usual 3-4 days. I'm unsure about the final result having played it so much during development. It functions as I'd intended though and I'm happy with the look and sound of the game. I'd like to have put more puzzles in but there wasn't time. There also needs to be more to do in the game - there's much scope for adding inventory items and other tasks for the player to do.

Techinically I'm pretty happy with how the code works and fits together. Having made Unit 4 a few weeks before, which was a very simple turn-based game, I was able to expand that little engine.

The game was written for UDGJ #2 and can be played here.

Unit 4

Unit 4 is a minmial roguelike created for the 7 Day Broughlike Game Jam.

The game contains many aspects of a “Berlin” roguelike : procedurally generated levels, perma-death, polymorphism, turned-based melee combat etc. The design is highly compressed like most Brough games and is easy to pick up and play.

The story is inspired by the 1966 movie “Fantastic Voyage” where a submarine is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into a patient’s blood stream with a small crew. Problems arise almost as soon as they enter the bloodstream. In this case, you’re a single person in a survival suit.

Those problems come in the form of antibodies roaming around looking for foreign invaders (you).

There are also nano-bot remnents scattered around which can be collected and used. Using an item for the first time reveals its properties.

Net Runner

Having been mostly partaking in game jams run by streamers I follow, Cyberpunk Jam 2019 was something of a step into the unknown.

Cyberpunk is one of my favourite sub-genres of science-fiction, so the prospect of doing that sort of game was an exciting one.

Initial thoughts floated around adventure type games in the area of Dreamweb, but that's an awful lots of work, particularly in the graphics department. I eventually elected to make a hacking puzzle game in the style of Exploit, an old Flash game.

The aesthetic was near the top of my list of priorities - that is, bright neon-glowing colours contrasted in darkness and fog. The game layout itself is very simple: a 9x9 grid of tiles, mostly blank but with some 'node' tiles scattered around that do various things.

Part of the way through, I was concerned the game was going to be too simplistic and easy but once I started designing some more complex levels, quite the opposite was true - it's jolly tricky.

Overall, I'm pleased with the game. The graphics and sound go well together and the game-play is smooth. Feedback so far as been overwhelmingly positive and helpful.

Play Net Runner in browser. There's also a Windows download.

Mass Update

Seems I'm falling behind on this here blog on account of continued frenetic game development. Having embraced the gamejam life wholeheartedly, I have six new games to share, all available on my itch.io page here.

Multipod

My submission for WGJ #78 is Multipod. The theme for the gamejam is “grow”.

The game is a significant variation from the Atari arcade classic Centipede. You start off as just a head moving around but as you collect the green pills throughout the level, extra body segments begin to trail along behind. This, hopefully, fulfills the grow theme. As your Multipod grows, it gets increasingly difficult to navigate the various hazards.

Link to browser version in itch.io

Elephant Smash

Written in a few hours today for the Hangover Game Jam 2019. Elephant Smash is a daft, difficult and brightly coloured offering you can play in browser.

Link on itch - https://benjames171.itch.io/elephant-smash