TriJam Attempt

Having never participated in a game jam before I had no idea what I was doing. I ended up creating a game with a prompt for an older jam even though I had entered one that had not yet started. I realized too late that had I entered the old jam, I had a completed game that was ready to submit. So this ended up being an attempt at the TriJam core principle of completing a game in 3 hours of actual development time, planning not included.

Present Protection is a completed game stemming from the prompt 'Santa's violent night'. It took 5 hours of actual development time to get the game you can play. It is bare-bones, minimal and some assets are rendered using your imagination, but it is a functional game with core graphical and game play elements.

The larger idea behind Present Protection was that Santa's sleigh crashed in rebel workshop-elf territory and 2 reindeer would be Secret Service agents escorting Santa through enemy territory with each one having a present to block projectiles with. A few more hours of development time would be enough to realize the idea fully, but that was not the point of this project nor is it in the spirit of the jam.

Scoping for a 3 hour development time was interesting and difficult but I have made small games before so how hard could it be? The game is almost what I initially envisioned, however the present moving mechanic changed from using the mouse to the using the keyboard, and you should have another present to block with. There is also a handful of missing graphical elements I thought I could create in time. These changes came about from the time constraint and really trying to get as close as I could to 3 hours of total development time. For a point of reference, the primary world script, which glues all the pieces together ended up taking over 2.5 hours of development time itself. At the true 3 hour mark, none of the logic was actually complete, although I had a bunch of elements that were functional. I documented what I had at that point in a short video and decided to keep going with the intention of getting a working game as fast as possible, and aiming for 5 hours of total development time. I had a working game at 4.75 hours, this left me with 15 minutes for one brush stroke of polish. I had 3 potential elements I thought I could implement in 15 minutes, a background image, hit sound and death sound for Santa or a particle effect for the coal. I chose the coal breaking effect. I am really not great with the particle system in Godot yet, but the effect is better than the projectiles just disappearing.

Making Present Protection and working within the TriJam constraints was more fun than I expected and ending up with a complete game instead of leaving another project sitting in my files at 70 percent functional is the best possible outcome. If had 2 more hours of development time, I would add the other present to block with, the reindeer sprites, more sound effects and a background image or parallax effect. If I had to do it over I would start with the core present moving mechanic, implement it first and then see where that got me with time instead of the asset creation path I chose this attempt.