@NoelFB posted a screenshot showing how dynamic lighting works in Skytorn.

Here are some of my thoughts on my favorite entries to #adventurejam so far. Voting ends in a little over two weeks. So, I’m not ruling out the possibility of looking at more games.

Join me as I look back on my #adventurejam game, Aurion and the Aurochs. You can take a look at the game over on gamejolt and you can view the sourcecode here. You can see all of the entries at adventurejam’s site.

I’m going to look at things that worked, things that didn’t, and the lessons I’ll take with me moving forward.

I’m happy to announce that my #adventurejam game is finished and released. I’ll do a more in-depth post-mortem next week. In the coming weeks, before the 30-day voting deadline ends, I want to take a look at some of the other submissions that pique my interest.

You can play Aurion and the Aurochs on gamejolt and you can view the source on github. Please leave me some feedback in the comments here or on twitter @zerosalife.

Quick update on #adventurejam

I feel like my game is on track to finish next Friday. I’m happy to say it’s feature complete. I’ll spend the next week polishing, various flavors of bughunting (maybe even some bugfishing and bugtrapping), and, most important of all, prosifying. My goal is to come up with a little game that’s compelling to play, rather than just a series of links to click.

Midwest Gaming Classic

Instead of a normal blog post, I want to take this time to shout out the @MGC_gaming, Midwest Gaming Classic. I’ll be attending today. So if you’re there hit me up @zerosalife.

The #adventurejam started last night. It lasts two weeks, until April 17. I’ll be covering my participation on here the blog under the adventurejam tag.

Today, I’m going to deploy small prototype Twine game to Game Jolt. I made this game a while back. It’s a complete prototype, but it’s still got some display flaws. I’m putting it out there in all of its buggy glory. The game served its purpose of familiarizing me with some of the ins and outs of Twine, as well as the build process I described last week.

The Age of the Flying Boat

I made a small prototype game based off of Hayao Miyazaki’s comic that was turned into the movie Porco Rosso. You must figure out how to fuel-up and start your airplane to respond to a desperate call for help.

You can play it here on Game Jolt.

I got it in my craw to write a short Twine game a while back. I wanted to familiarize myself with the language. And writing a short game in Twine seemed to be lower hanging fruit than trying to implement my own text adventure framework for Unity or some other game engine.

In two weeks, April 3 – April 17, Cassie Benter and Stacy Davidson are hosting a game jam focused on creating adventure games called #adventurejam. I share the organizers’ love of point-and-click adventure games, and I’m totally thrilled to announce my participation. AdventureJam is a fortnight-long competition to create and adventurous game-ish experience.

The rules of AdventureJam are more strict than #procjam, the jam I participated in last fall. They require that the work on a game take place over the two weeks of the AdventureJam competition. I don’t expect to have the time to create something that is truly competitive, but I may as well play along. Like #procjam, I plan on spending the next series of blog posts covering AdventureJam-related content.

So, click every pixel on the screen, grab everything in sight, exhaust every dialog option, and combine items in new and mysterious ways, it’s #adventurejam time.

Math Team Hearts is a speedy modification to Hearts that ironically involves less math than the vanilla game.

WuXingRPS is a prototype 5-way rock paper scissors game. The eventual purpose for the prototype is to serve as a minigame to teach elemental interactions in an RPG battle system.

I chose WuXing elements because they provide a nontraditional (in terms of typical RPGs) series of interesting interactions.

The Five Elements

The five elements are Earth (yellow), Metal (silver), Water (black), Wood (green), and Fire (red). They have two levels of interactions that you can look at anytime by pressing the ? button in the bottom right corner.

The Destruction interaction, indicated by red arrows, shows that, for example, Metal chops Wood. So Metal beats Wood.

The Generation interaction shows that, for example, Water grows Wood. So Wood “eats” Water.

That’s all there is to it. Click those element disks and try to get more points than the computer.

Surprise: iteration to find mechanics

In an earlier version of the prototype the player and enemy choices that resulted in a generation relationship interaction led to a draw. This meant that 3/5 interactions were draws. The prototype was less exciting than the current version. This iteration was critical in achieving a sense of fun in this prototype, as well as fleshing out the goals of an eventual RPG battle system using the elemental mechanic.

So making this prototype led to unexpected value. Let that be a lesson to keep it simple, because sometimes the simple things that are achievable within your current skillset can lead to surprising results.

Conclusion

I’m really interested in feedback, so give the game a try and tell me what you think in the comments or on twitter. If you’re an artist interested in gussying up my shameful attempts at UI and UX, please please please reach out to me. I’d love to improve this prototype.