Role
Programmer
About the game
A week long game jam game made around the themes: Paper, Blue, and noncombat. I was inspired to make a survival game like Life of Pi and Don't Starve. The goal of the game was to leave the open sea and get to one of the four edges around the map to win. On your journey you'll collect items floating in the sea to increase your paper boat's durability, quench your thirst, and eat food. You will also find islands that will have random encounters and a chance to repair your boat. I implemented the inventory and item system also using XML to store the item powers.
What went right
Early implementation of the game was very fast. We had a quick tiled layout with randomized environment easily.
What went wrong
I felt that our team could've been more proactive trying to enjoy the game. Other than my initial idea, we didn't actively question my original plan. In the end our game could've been much more fun if we focused on new features that would improve play. Furthermore, I feel that a survival type game tends to have tons of content, open world, and general things to do, which means it's very difficult to create a satisfying experiment for a week long game. The game was also too repetitive and probably not challenging enough.
Used:
C#
XNA
Brian Macintosh's sprite library
XML