First-ever game jam!

I saw a presentation from Downwell developer Ojiro Fumoto where he talked about the advice he'd been given about becoming a developer, including "make a game every week for a year." I've been learning how to use Godot for 2 years now and I've put out two games, one of which is buggy, and has no end goals or win conditions. So a game jam seemed like a good idea! It was time to move past the endless graveyard of half-projects in my Godot folders and FINISH something for once.

The B1T jam seemed like a good fit for my first time, since there's a natural limitation (1-bit graphics only) and it lasts a week, so there's a bit more breathing room than, say, GMTK. I reached out to Kevin since I knew he'd published a jam game in the past, and he's always been a funny and smart thinker/writer when it comes to games. It also helped that I knew he could cover all the bases - coding, gameplay, and most especially music. In the weeks leading up to the jam I spent a bit more time doing animation and 1-bit design for Pixel Dailies, so I'd be a bit more comfortable doing the art on my own. 

Kevin and I discussed a few different options for genre, including making a 3D game in Unity (which proved too complex to figure out) and a rhythm game (which ended up being appropriate for the theme.) The night before the jam started, I had an idea for a twin game where you control two states, one fast and one slow. I liked the idea of a peaceful side and an aggressive side, and when I pitched it to Kevin he was on board. We were picturing the right side being more like a Rhythm Heaven/Elite Beat Agents type game, and the left being like the bass line on a piano.

Developing went surprisingly smoothly! By the first night, I had the basics of the asteroid dodge, and the falling feather animation. I think I ended up using the first spaceship sprite that I drew, but ended up redoing my art for the asteroids, monk, and background. It wasn't until day 3 or 4 that we had a usable soundtrack, so I used a metronome to time the asteroid spawning. We figured out the crossover between the left and right sides at the very end, and ended up adding and then removing a handful of other features (a sun/moon to count measures on the left side, warning signs on the right, double-directional asteroid spawning...) Kevin mainly focused on music and sound elements, but also came to play testing to compile a good list of necessary improvements, and we spent the entire last day doing bug fixes and rewriting any code we wanted to change. His QC was also crucial -- I ended up tweaking the ship move speed about an hour before the deadline based on his feedback.

There are plenty of things I would've liked to tweak -- Our asteroid timer uses the somewhat clunky create_timer() function in Godot, rather than anything that's actually synced up to the music. (Attempts to implement the Rhythm Notifier add-on were unsuccessful.) As a result, the "BEAT" theme isn't quite as strong as we would've liked. But I'm really happy with the art and music, and I think we managed to pack in a surprising number of fun features. Play testing courtesy of the NYU Games Center and my girlfriend Virginia was extremely helpful -- the tutorial pages are a result of seeing people struggle to figure out the controls and objectives, and I think the game benefited enormously as a result. Even my code wasn't too bad, since I'm getting a bit better at knowing what to put and where. (There are a lot of funny little "efficiencies" like not having a variable for health and just pulling the .value from the health bar displays, or not having a spaceship progress check and just pulling the position.x value on its minimap icon...) In one week, we created 15 audio files (including different versions of the theme instruments at 3 different bpm's), 42 sprites (not all got used), 17 scenes, and 16 scripts. Not bad for our first jam! 

I hope people enjoy playing it, they share high scores (it's pretty hard to get above 5k) and they get the theme music stuck in their head like we did.