I Survived My First Game Jam with Stranded Monster

So I submitted this little game for GMTK GameJam 2020. I worked solo and I did more and better than I expected. Let's say I gained a lot from the event so far. If you haven't played my game, please try it. Your feedback is much needed for a beginner like me.

Let's talk about the theme of this year(I have been watching videos about previous Jams). The theme is actually a bit more difficult this time if I interpret it the most straight forward way. A game where you loss control is not fun, because it kind of defeats the purpose the purpose of playing a game where you want to be in control. How do you make driving a broken bike fun and not seem like a frustrating or buggy experience? 

This Game I made is a top-down action / survival / shooting game, where you play as a cute little tentacle monster who stranded on a unknown planet. And you got a virus which make you go Out of Control and your tentacles all jumbled up from time to time.  In the game play perspective, your control are swapped, the buttons are mapped with one or more or even no actions. You will find yourself constantly adapting new controls. 

To make this game not a frustrating mess (I hope it isn't), the first key is the difficulty. Even though the control is messed up, the player can over come the mess as a challenge of the game. The line between a challenge and a handicap is blur so it rely heavily on testing and tuning. For example I turned down the enemy speed to give player time to adapt new controls. I make the sword more powerful so player can get out of tight situation due to the swapped controls, as long as you find the sword button. It kind of falls into the feedback loop design Mark talked about. The player learn the controls -> play aggressively -> the control swapped -> get into tight spots -> slow down and learn the new controls. This loop not only make the game a fair experience but also keep the game fresh (Sadly, I didn't have time to finish up the wave system to fully achieve this). Then I took the advantage of the mechanic to create little surprise elements. I added the party cornet so that when your controls are swapped you will accidentally us it when a weapon is most needed. the powerful tool becoming something like a party toy is a cartoon-ish joke I wanted to make. It also forces you to back out from aggressive play and relearn the controls.

These are just one of a few design choices I made during the Jam. Still a lot I could have done better when I made the game. After the rating is over, I might post some postmortem or some future updates on the game. Maybe I will make a two player mode where you can receive friendly fire. I don't know. We will see.