Devlog 1 – Game Jam, 1bit & purr

Today, I’m writing my first devlog. A contraction of development and blog, a devlog is an article that talks about the progress of a project, and is rather oriented towards everything to do with technical design. In my case, this type of article will deal with various subjects such as development, design and marketing: basically, everything that’s topical on my side.

How’s the game going?

Bad? To be more precise, I put my ideas in order, as I told you in my previous article, but I still had this impression of moving too slowly with vague ideas. So, no, it’s not going the way I want it to.

And that’s where it gets interesting: I took part in a Game Jam that was a bit of an eye-opener. I had the opportunity to create a game, and I’ve never had as much motivation and ideas as I did in that short time. In fact, the Jam concept fits my personality very well: it requires me to think fast and work on a new idea with many constraints, and I love that. I’ll tell you about this experience just below, and explain how it enabled me to move forward and take my projects in a direction that I think will suit me better.

Participation in Mini Jam 118

So I took part in the “Mini Jam 118” Game Jam for 3 days, and came away very enthusiastic about what’s to come. A Game Jam is a time-limited event during which you have to create a game (often a video game) on an imposed theme, with a mandatory limitation to take into account. Mini Jam 118 had “Vampires” as its theme, “Blood is lethal” as its limiter, and a time limit of 72 hours to complete the game. Now that you know that, here’s Erratic Bloody:

Impressive, isn’t it? The game’s synopsis is as follows: you are the new master of a pet vampire, and your aim is to keep him alive. The gameplay is a mix of cookie clicker and management game, you can improve your servant with the help of a store, or simply feed him by hand.

How the Game Jam works

Pixel art 1bit and minimalist inspiration

As you know, I’m a big fan of pixel art, and in the interests of time (I only had 72 hours to do everything), I decided to go for an extremely minimalist style. My assets have a very low resolution, the main character is only made up of a few hundred pixels, and I only used 2 colors for the designer. From this point of view, I knew exactly what I wanted and which artists to draw inspiration from, which saved me precious time for other parts I was less familiar with, such as setting up the sound design or publishing the game on the itch.io platform.

The problems of minimalist pixel art

One of the difficulties with this type of design is to create shapes that are easily recognizable, so that the player understands what’s happening on screen. With a character 10 pixels high, it can quickly become unreadable. And I think I succeeded! I’ve had no negative feedback on either style or legibility. On the contrary, I’ve even had a lot of positive feedback:

Reminder to myself when developing: do not divide by 0

So I spent 72 hours developing this little game where you have to feed a vampire. As usual, I used my favorite tool: Game Maker Studio, which enabled me to code on MacOS and quickly release a web version of the game.

Apart from a few bugs such as:

• A black screen at the start of the project that really scared me
• Totally blurred pixel art
• Pnj disappearing from the screen (I tried dividing a number by 0)
• A character whose speed is multiplied by 120
• A life bar that fills up upside down
• Visual and sound effects removed 1 hour before publishing the game

Development was rather quiet. I was able to unfold my story line, develop my ideas and test different mechanics throughout the Jam. And if you’re wondering what a video game looks like when I’m creating it, well, it looks like this:

Sound design between bug and hum

One thing I haven’t had much opportunity to do, in my very young career as a video game designer, is implement sound design and music. Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite to plan here. I had found a royalty-free sound that gave a moody feel and went well with the landscape, but I had to delete it just before publishing because it didn’t work. To give you an idea, it was this mood music that I had set my sights on:

Luckily for me, the other sounds used in the game work great! I found them on freesound.org quite easily and modified them with the famous Audacity. If I’d thought that a program I’d discovered in junior high school would come in handy so many years later. So I implemented a few finely chosen sounds, including a cat purr that seduced the players. I’ll leave it to you to discover it in game.

Voting results

There are no rewards at a Game Jam, the most important thing is to learn, exchange ideas and meet other creators, whether they be developers, designers, musicians, game designers…

Is there a prize for the winners? The prize is the friends we’ve made along the way.

Mini Jam

There is also a voting system, which I think is well done, and which allows you to gauge the popularity of your game. So it was with some enthusiasm that I discovered my scores:

Out of more than 151 games, I came third behind Vampire and Hypochondriac vampire, both of which are superbly realized and which I invite you to try out. I also got top marks in the “concept” category, and it’s great to know that your game appeals to so many people.

If you’ve got 10 minutes to spare, the game is available for free here Erratic Bloody on my itch.io. Of course, I’d love to hear what you think of the game!

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Suzon, who gave me a hand with the game’s logo and provided me with food and care during those 3 days of non-stop development. Without her, who knows if I wouldn’t be parched at the bottom of my apartment by now. And a special thanks to Yatch, for his support and constructive exchanges around the game.

What’s next?

Fewer tutorials, more games

As I said at the beginning of this article, I’ve reviewed my objectives. There’s no longer any question of releasing a big game in a few years’ time, I’m going to focus on shorter experiences. This will enable me to build a community around my games, have more visibility on my finances and test different formats. What’s more, it suits my personality better, and it’s a less ambitious project for the beginner that I am.

I’m also putting aside the Game Dev tutorials I had in mind. They’re something I love to do, but they’re really taking up too much of my time at the moment. I’ll continue to write tutorials for Game Maker, but with less emphasis than I’d originally planned.

Sokpop & Punkcake délicieux

Also, just like the principle of Sokpop and PUNKCAKE Délicieux, two collectives I love, my patreon will be open to people wishing to support me financially. In the long term, I’d also like to open a discord to bring together beta-testers and centralize exchanges with players. If this is something that interests you, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter!

Erratic Bloody 2

So, in view of the feedback I’ve had on this mini-game (over 20 positive comments in addition to exchanges with certain players), I’ve decided that Erratic Bloody will be my first commercial game. This means I’ll be able to implement the many improvements I had in mind, as well as those suggested by players, to make the game even better.

More in a few days.