Magic: The Juggling

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The Concept

Magic: The Juggling was my team's entry for the 2024 Unwrap Gamejam with the theme Keep It Moving.

You and another player are both wizards in a grocery store, it seems there must've been a rivalry between you two because you can't help but engage in a fierce Juggling Duel. Each of you picks up various groceries and appliances, juggles them, and then lobs them at the other. The better you are at juggling, the more damage you'll do.

Juggling is achieved by picking up items and then alternating between the 2 Juggle buttons, the hands alternate lighting up to help the players, the faster you correctly press these buttons the more damage you'll do when you finally blast your items away. But if you press the wrong button you'll lose an item, which you might lose to your opponent.

Gamejam version Vs. Final Version

In the beginning, to keep in line with the theme, whenever you went off beat you'd lose all your items, this made the core mechanic very necessary but also a bit frustrating. The first change I implemented in the post-jam version was making it so the core mechanic was something that helped you instead of punished you.

I redid the mechanic so that you wouldn't lose your items on a miss-juggle, but juggling faster and faster would do more damage.

Another thing that kept happening was that the aisles would start piling up with all the items from the shelves, my solution to this was one that also made sense logically. I added a mechanic where the sodas and chips would explode on impact, this has a more impressive effect and also clears up space. With the result being that players had to manage their items more cleverly.

The Challenging Aspect

Gamejams are always exciting due to the time-constraint, but this time there was even more pressure because I was the sole programmer. Participating in a game jam as the sole programmer was a challenging yet rewarding experience that tested both my technical skills and my ability to manage a project independently.

One of the main challenges was balancing the various roles required to complete the project. With no one to delegate tasks to, I was responsible for everything—from coding and debugging to asset integration and UI design. Prioritization became key. I focused on building a solid core mechanic first, ensuring it was completebefore adding any additional features. This approach helped me manage the workload and keep the project on track.

Throughout the process, I made sure to maintain a clear vision for the game. While it was easy to get caught up in the myriad details, keeping the overall goal in mind allowed me to make quick decisions on what to cut or prioritize as the deadline approached.

There were definitely a lot of moments where I had the choice between a complicated but modular approach and a quick & dirty bandaid, nearly every single time I opted for the bandaid approach it came back to bite me. This definitely taught me the necessity for prioritising neat and logical architecture. Even if it seems like overcomplicating a problem, you can never expect how complicated something can become.

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