Introduction:

I created "The Silent Criminal", which was made in Godot, as a dual submission for the Brackey's Game Jam and Godot Wild Jam (GWJ) in early January of this year. 

It's a short first person adventure style game with some intractable NPCs (using the Dialogic addons for conversation and the Cyclops level editor for basic level design).

Also my favorite game design jam has recently finished. 

Do I plan on releasing any more "quick" games? Maybe.

Nitty gritty design talk:

I had previous created a mock-up version of the bank in "The Silent Criminal" as part of a H1H submission to test out the interaction of player inputs and collision shapes in Godot. In this instance I checked if the player had pressed a certain button within a certain time frame to check whether to apply an effect (being caught). I've also used a similar idea for my NPC interactions, which only occur if the player is within the vicinity of the NPC. This idea was later expanded upon in my final H1H game "Cave Adventure" which checked if the player was within a certain bounding box and was pressing a certain button to "climb" a vine.

Collectable items have also made a comeback into my designs, which were first introduced in 2D in "Torchie" and "Catbox", and more recently in "Borg and Gruff". These are simple but effective ways to allow players to unlock new areas and gives a more tangible goal. I have attempted inventory management once, but it has a bare bones UI, which was pretty limited. in  "The Silent Criminal", the main goal is to collect the key to unlock the door of the bank and escape with the money. I think one of the pitfalls this game runs into is the visibility. I could have implemented a minimap to allow the player to chart their course and understand the environment better.

Due to submitting to two different jams, the game had to follow both of their themes: "Nothing can go wrong" and "Erase" respectively. The main story of the game was that the player was plotting a bank heist and nothing could go wrong. The player had to find special equipment in the game that gave the player an ability to effectively erase the cameras vision on the player.

Also told earlier, "Cave Adventure" was my final H1H as now the jam has changed ideas and times to a monthly schedule, which hasn't suited me as well (I prefer a quick prototype and design phase lasting 1-3 hours for smaller games). I have been considering joining the Trijam (of a similar length) which is a weekly 3 hour jam, but at the moment I have been focusing on my uni work.

A learning experience:

These past jams have taught me a wide range of game design techniques, such as state machines, getter and setter functions, level design, and how to create clickable/placeable/interactable objects. I do admit that some of my H1H submissions were better than others, due to the execution of ideas being a fair bit harder. Here are some of my successes and failures in the H1H jam:

Animal collector - A game about matching the same animals. This game taught me the logic behind the animation sprite and in Godot. Though it does undo all your progress if you make a mistake.

Dairy Robbery and Passtuck - Two simple puzzle games, which feature clues hidden inside the levels. These taught me about custom 3D textures (implemented in the Cyclops level editor), developing a "Password" lock system, and fairly simple environmental effects like thunder.

Machine Molder- A limited character creation and attribute system, which changed things like jump height and speed. Inspired by the Sims amongst other games.

Mr. Toast - A simple NPC following mechanic with enemies. I had not fully grasped how to use navigation agents, so I chose to move the enemies towards the player. 

Assignment Due! and Globus' camp - Game which utilize navigation agents. "In Assignment Due!", the Boss chases the player around the workplace, and causes an end state if touched. In "Globus' Camp" the player selects where to move the character to, then the shortest path is found, and the character is moved there. Both games have elements of above games woven into their core ideas.

Transport router - This game was a result of me playing around with paths and allowing the player to change the speed of trains, which lead to something simple and intuitive to play. 

Spinning Ride - I had initially planned more for this game, like the ability to actually ride the carousel. This game failed due to me spending too much time in Blender creating the main asset of the game and figuring out how to properly animate it. 

Gare-Deen and Meat-a-lot - These game contains an idea to create a management system, similar to that of a cooking simulator. Though the core systems are working, there is much improvement needed. The creation of the flower baskets is unclear and the UI is very bare bones. Similarly, the cooking of the meat was not intuitive because of the lack of direction (although this game did provide an index, the meat could be cooked anywhere on the screen, not specifically on the grill).

Alone and Bug and bee - These games had basic movement and collection systems which failed due to me be overambitious in the level design or choice of controls. Here the scope of the games and my understanding of how to properly implement such ideas let me down here.

Block those beans - Here's something unique, but still pretty rubbish. The idea was that you had to block the falling objects as they tried to reroute around your defense. The implementation of the idea was quite bad, and due to not having the proper assets, I had to improvise a story.

Future plans:

Where do I go on from here? 

I've noticed that many of my game have similar movement styles, or use similar systems from previous games. I'm planning on creating a more robust set of templates to use in future "quick" games. Moreover, I'm hoping to combine some of the systems in my smaller games into an arcade like game (similar to old retro games) in order to make my creations feel more connected.

I'm also planning a game that will take a bit longer to develop, and keep regular updates to show how that goes. Will it be a worthy successor to Snailyo? Maybe.

I'm also planning to create video devlogs to explain the creation process of a few of my larger games, since it was a highly requested feature and I feel like this would be helpful for future me when looking back at my ignorance.

Credits:

Thanks to these people, communities and tools for helping me learn about game jamming for the past year and a half. I've enjoyed discovering my passion for game dev with you :)

https://hypergamedev.itch.io/  - The creator of the H1H game jam.

https://itch.io/jam/godot-wild-jam-81 - The current Godot Wild Jam

https://brackeysgames.itch.io/ - The creator of Brackey's game jam

https://github.com/blackears/cyclopsLevelBuilder - The Cyclops level builder

https://github.com/dialogic-godot/dialogic - The Dialogic addon