Daimonji Post Jam Report

Daimonji was my first attempt at a game jam and, due to this being my first attempt, I wanted to try my hand at some jams that had already passed before participating in an active event. After over a year of making games, testing what I would be able to accomplish in a 48-hour time limit was an intimidating but rewarding process that also pushed me to make a more complete experience than in some of my other projects.

Although this was a jam done after the fact I still abided by the rules of keeping development within the 48-hour time frame, including the reveal of the theme. After revealing the theme of “Downwell’s Dual Purpose Design” I started by writing down a variety of game mechanics and thinking about how they could serve multiple purposes like in the examples of Downwell, Splatoon, and Doom. Of the mechanics I had I was drawn to a dashing mechanic. The first session of about 3 hours was focused on figuring out the idea and prototyping. The main idea was that dashing would be used to traverse the level but also interact with the items and enemies around the stage. After finishing the main prototype I found it very enjoyable to string together dashes with the crystals and enemies that restore your dash upon impact.

The second session of about 6 hours was focused on trying to get the levels and visuals figured out. After the fact, I believe this was where my first misstep began. I fairly quickly decided on the dungeon pack from Synty as I had the idea of a fireball in my head from early on since I felt having a humanoid player model would have more complications than I had time for. However, implementing the asset pack took a lot of time in various areas, such as creating the environment and getting the feel I was looking for. This of course is an important step to take the game beyond a grey box demo, but if I could have finished the levels before fighting with visuals I think I may have been able to complete my vision for the jam version. Going into future projects I’ve ingrained the lesson to keep functionality as the #1 priority from working on this game. 

Despite the setbacks brought by them working with the assets did help with the direction of the game as well. Originally from the prototype, this was going to be more of a speedrunning game where you have to get to the top of the level while collecting all the dash crystals in one go without falling back to the ground. When making the level I felt this would be a bit too difficult to design and possibly to play as well. After looking the the assets and seeing the variety of runes I decided that a level-based “unlock the exit” game would be better for me. This would allow a ramp-up in difficulty in the original mechanic while still allowing options to make the game more accessible to differing skill levels.

The third and final session of about 9 hours was the sprint to the end. My original idea was to have 5 levels and a boss and at the start of this session, I hadn’t finished any besides the base environment and interactions. Creating levels has always been my least favorite part of the “solo dev experience” but making these levels was a fairly straightforward process for this project. There are many things to learn about the level design process but I believe for the levels I was able to make I achieved my goal of showing the player how to use the mechanics without giving explicit tutorials outside of controls.

After finalizing the first 3 levels, adding sound effects, and adjusting some aspects of gameplay for a better feel I was nearing the end of my timeline. With this in mind, I prepped the project for publishing, if I wasn’t able to finish the other levels, by creating the title and win screen. After this with the final 2 hours, I had to finish and publish the project I tried to at least get Level 4 created that would introduce enemies. This is again where trying to get the assets to work before making the level itself caused a major roadblock. I spent about 40 minutes of my time trying to get the Synty models to work with Mixamo animations to no avail. I already had the prefab for the enemy’s made including how they would behave differently to the dash crystals so this was a very unfortunate time loss. I eventually had to pivot to a different look for the enemies that I eventually was more happy with but by the time I got there, I didn’t have enough time to make the level.

And slightly over the 48-hour limit, I was able to build and release this version of the game. Overall, I’m proud of what I was able to make for my first Jam experience. In looking back on it after the fact and having friends play it, I feel like my execution of the theme was a little lackluster with what’s in the Jam version. If I was able to get the enemies and even the boss into the game I think that would have sold the theme a lot better. And even as I write this I can think of various ways the dash could be further used to emphasize the dual-purpose design to make this more of a puzzle platformer.

This project was never gonna be a top 20 contender but I’m still very happy that I did this and what I was able to make of it. While being a gameplay programmer is my go-to pocket of the industry, trying my hand and the other aspects of the process is always an enlightening experience. I learned a lot about the game jam experience from this “practice round” and look forward to bringing those learning into the game a week process and future jams. I also plan on working on the subsequent GMTK Jams leading up to the present over time and hope that I can continue to make games that I can be even more proud of.