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Hey just wanted to say that I love the art style! Good job on making everything look cohesive :)

I also want to say that I feel for you with not being able to add a sound effect because of the code design. I don't know how many issues like this I've run into just over the course of this jam. I hope you find a solution!

Didn't have any time to work on this during the weekend but today i'm back! I added UI elements so that the player can see how many of each crystal they have and also implemented fireballs that the player can shoot using their collected red crystals!

Shooting:

Besides this, I've been thinking about what to make of this game. I'm leaving for a small vacation on Thursday and won't be able to work more on the game after that. So my plan is to implement a few more room templates for the level generation, add "spikes" that the player must navigate around and finally add a simple boss at the end of the game. The player will have to collect 10 blue crystals around the map in order to unlock the boss room and fight the boss. I've never implemented a boss fight, so it will be a fun challenge.

I even had some more time tonight and it felt simple enough so I added some health display and damage to the player!

Alright, so I spent way too much time trying to refactor some code so that it becomes really simple to add new characters or entities to the game. It didn't work for a long time but I finally managed to get it working. Glad I kept at it.

With that new code we can add the first monster to the game!

Introducing the super cute but also deadly (when I implement a health system) SLIME.

Thank you! I feel that lighting is useful in so many games and often has a lot of impact for fairly low effort :)

Thanks! It's my first game in a while. I did lots of gamedev about 5 years ago in high school, just getting back into it now. I feel like I know a lot more about myself and how to structure projects now that I can produce more faster which feels great.

I can do a little writeup on how the level gen works when I get the time! It is heavily inspired by Spelunky in it's current state, so check that out if you want to know more! :)

So I figured out how to use unity's Rule tile to create a nicer looking tilemap. I went ahead and made a better tileset for the walls. This really gave the game a nicer look.

I also spent some time figuring out how to get some nice 2d lighting in unity, which was really simple one you get the lightweight render pipeline up and running (not that hard either).

Finally I made some sprites for the crystals that I want the player to collect. Each one will have a specific purpose.

• Yellow: Gives the player light, without it the cave and enemies become harder to spot
• Red: This is supposed to represent fire, this is used to power all the players offensive abilities
• Blue: These are going to be related to the players score and might work like a currency if I have the time to implement shops

I also added some nice lights to these to make them more visible and implemented so the player can pick them up.

I love the graphics-style. Looks really playful! I'd love to see some gifs of the gameplay if you get the chance :)

Day2:

I worked on adding some animation to the player character to give more feedback. The animations, along with some tweaking to the acceleration did make the movement feel better. Its not perfect but I want to focus on other things.

After the animations were feasible I started working on the level generation. I tried a few different approaches.

First I tried generating everything in code, but after a while I felt that the levels would probably become very boring, or impossible to complete.

Next, after looking at the map gen for Spelunky, I attempted to do something similar with Unity's Tilemap. I created a few custom tiles which had a certain probability of spawning in the map which was pretty cool. Then I tried creating Template rooms using Tilemaps and Prefabs. I wasn't really happy with how the editing of each Tilemap worked, and it felt like I was fighting Unity the whole time.

Finally I settled on using simple text-files for the room templates which worked the smoothest. Even though editing the templates in a text editor isn't the most inspiring thing in the world, it works.

Next steps will be to create more room templates and add more tile types.

Then I can work on putting more things like enemies into the world.

Yea for sure, my plan is to put a boss at the end of the cave that the player has to fight with the resources/stuff they gather during their run throughout the cave.

If there was more time, I'd like to add persistent rewards between runs for the resources gathered during each run. But that won't be feasible to do during the jam I think. 

Hi!

Just started work on my game for the Jam. I've decided on creating a platformer with a generated world (based mostly in a cave) where the player explores a cave to find special resources and fight monsters.

I'm making up the story as I go along, but one thing I wish is for the player to have limited amounts of light, so the player must either stock up on coal or oil to burn for light before each entry into the cave, or find light sources while exploring. 

Today was Day1 so I worked on the most important thing: platformer movement and collisions. For simplicity I will be only using a tile-based map without slopes or uneven terrain.

Here is a gif of the movement so far, I want a fast-paced feel to the movement so that the player is rewarded for skillful movement.

Next I will implement a dash movement for more variety as well as start working on generating the base levels.

1. Hi there! What's your name? Want to introduce yourself?

I'm h0wser from Sweden. I'm currently in the final stages of my masters degree in computer science and engineering.

2. Did you participate in the last jam we held? If so, what do you plan on doing better this time? If not, what's your reason for joining?

This is my first jam in a while, I used to develop games for fun and did a few Ludum dares. Got out of it for a few years but now I want to get started again and this Jam seems like the perfect place to find inspiration and just get that first buggy prototype out of the way :p

3. What games are your favorites? Did any of them inspire you, or made you want to make your own?

I really like competitive games like starcraft and csgo but I also really love  competitive but casual "couch-multiplayer" games like towerfall ascension. Those games are more what I like to play but as for inspiration for creating games I think FEZ is one of the biggest inspirations, I love how the art and music come together with cool gameplay mechanics to create a cohesive world. That's what I wish to achieve with my games.

4. Do you have experience with game development? What did you do/with what engine?

For a long time me and my friends made small games with C++ because we thought it was cool. I have strong programming skills but have realized that most of those games where more about the code than about the games. That is why I've decided to switch to using Unity so that I don't go around implementing rectangle collisions for the 34th time and can focus on gameplay instead.

5. Tell us about something you're passionate about!

I'm also really into music production and music overall. So for my game music will definitely have its place. I'm interested in creating a world of music that interacts with whats happening on screen. I would someday like to produce soundtracks for games as well.

6. What are your goals for this game jam?

Build a simple but fun game that feels good. One of the most important things for this Jam is that my game gets to a proper finished state. I have too many projects that just get forgotten, I really want to make sure this one is finished.