The Walking Dead games jam was very different from the last, I think the only rules were "Do it in within two weeks" and "Use unity 3D". I worked with Ross in a team of two and we just sat in our bedrooms and worked for large parts of the days over the two weeks, talking over Skype, Brainstorming and getting work done. I think the theme was "apocalypse" or "apocalyptic" or something along those lines, and we spent the first day or so coming up with ideas and knocking out quick proofs-of concepts if we saw fit.
We decided at the start that most people would probably do some form of hardcore third-person Zombie survival game, so we set out to make our ideas a little different. A couple of days before I was trawling the documentation for the new unity particles, and found an interesting (and reasonably new) section which enabled collision of particles with objects, and collision detection. we had a little think and eventually decided on using the particles as a fire-hose type thing, and used it in a proof of concept; it was a nice effect (even though it was a little crude) and we fell in love. We developed the idea a little further and thought about doing a game a little like the water-hose games at carnivals.
The idea was to take a comical approach to the zombie apocalypse game; where you are supposed to be in training for a zombie apocalypse by dousing and knocking over cardboard cut-outs of zombies with a fire hose before they overwhelm you. We chose this idea for many reasons.
- We thought it was hilarious, interesting and fun.
- As well as being a reasonably simple idea, it had the ability to expand and evolve after the base mechanics were in.
- Our team didn't comprise of any amazing or fast 3D modellers; this meant cardboard cut-outs were within our ability range, and wouldn't look out of place.
- Everybody can understand what's happening and what to do.
- A variable stream of water is very different to how bullets and other weapons usually work.
We soon got up a proof of concept and the base mechanic in; we tweaked with the feel of the controls and copy and pasted a few zombies around and it worked really quite well; We did however decide that it would get very repetitive and boring very quickly, so we had to find a way of changing things around a bit.
It was hard to think of things to add depth to the game, while under time pressures, without spending days modelling or coding new mechanics or levels into the game. At this time we also noticed that although quite different our game had some similarities with a Thrillville mini-game; you shoot targets, But if you get groups of targets in quick succession new targets come up and you get combos and so-on.
At the same time, somehow, we were also talking about pop culture related material; I think Wreckingball was recently released and we were just talking about random things on the Internet. We ended up combining the two and made some pop culture-themed combo event zombies.
We ended up with;
- A crane with multiple targets, which when all hit made a half-naked Miley Cyrus zombie swing in on a wrecking-ball
- A mausoleum (based from the mausoleum in John Carter) which had bats fly out of it and the batman soundtrack play
- A billboard that got destroyed by wreck-it ralph zombie
We would have put in more but we ran out of time.
A release of the game is HERE
I think it was a good game; there are several things I might have changed and improved;
- Make the combo targets and events more clear and appear different from the others.
- Make the game more like an arcade game (forgot the genre), those ones where you kill enemies and can duck, and after clearing the area you move around the level to a different part and so on.
- Link the game a little better with the theme, or somehow emphasise it.
- Perhaps upgrades, or multipliers
- Different zombie types ( I dunno; e.g. you have to concentrate a water jet on it for a set amount of time)
- More hidden secrets (there is actually already one, which nobody has found because of the lack of emphasis on targetable areas, in which you soak all of the lights in the level, the moon glows red and all of the zombies dance to the sound of thriller).
I enjoyed this games jam, it was different; it would have been a lot harder to do such a thing in that amount of time if I hadn't worked with Ross before. I think two weeks for a games jam is very sketchy, because you get to the point where you're thinking " I've actually spent considerable amount of time developing this", which isn't necessarily a great thing. We mad a pretty polished game in that amount of time though.
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