phill

[Release] Carved the eyes out of my head

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Game link for all those game players out there (hi Ben_X)https://fifogamedev.itch.io/carvetheeyes. I'll do up a post-mortem tomorrow but for now I need sleep! 

 

Level instructions! Because I actually want people to finish this dumb game.

Level 1 - Tickle the giant by timing your clicks when the white circles match the radius of the blue circles. Think Osu or Elite Beat Agents.

Level 2 - Alternate pressing left and right. Feel the boredom of a young person doing menial tasks.

Level 3 - Click on the teeth to remove them...slowly. There's a certain order to removing them, and you only get three mistakes before it resets!

Level 4 - Click on the circle to start flaying, then follow the circle with your mouse. Keep within the radius of the circle! (± a little)

Level 5 - Alternate mashing the up and down buttons to lift the contraption to the required height so that it can crack the heck out of those bones.

Level 6 - ???

---

 

I made a promise to myself that I would use the random title generator and go with the very first title that came up. So boom, I'm going to be working on a game based on a gross terminal 7 title, Carved the eyes out of my head.

 

I did a bit of a braindump session last night, starting when I was already a little tipsy, but even in the cold light of day I think it's a solid idea. I'll spoiler my thoughts here:

Spoiler

A game where you are uncovering a giant skull.
Uncovering is a puzzle where pieces will fall if you don't set it up properly. Falling things are events that you then have to fight or do.
 
Idea of one big boss made up of small events.
 
Or an endless landscape of a big boss that you have to traverse. 
 
Or just have literally the job of putting out the eyes of a boss be a massive undertaking. All the while he is whispering to you, questioning you.
 
Or a game about reclaiming parts of a giant who is old and wishes to be of use. Each part of him is a resource that your people can use, but requires minigame or something to reclaim. Kind of like a gross wishing tree. 
 
What does the game play look like?
 
Puzzles where you need to retain as much of all the things as possible?
 
Player is part of a clan that acts as stewards for the giants when they die. They fight off any predators that nip at the heels of the old giants and then perform ceremonies to lay them to rest. The giants feel no pain (or at least the player is told that) as their bodies are scavenged by the mountain folk.
 
Gameplay: side scroller where you fend off monsters at the heels of the giant. Explore landscape of body and harvest starting from toes up while giant speaks to you. Maybe different ages of character? You start as a kid who harvests toe nails as a game, making the giant laugh. Eventually you are the elder who pries out the eyes and you get told that they do actually feel pain.
 
Defense gameplay:
Giants defend themselves by turning into stone. You can jump around on them to defeat the enemies.
Initially jump around on them because you are a kid who likes jumping on things as they enter the village. Have to defend for more and more further out from the village = more time and more dangerous enemies.
 

 

tl;dr The player will control a member of a clan who have a symbiotic relationship with nature giants. The giants travel to the clan's grounds to die and have their organs be recycled as the clan's buildings, weaponry, base resources. The player will defend the giants from predators that would seek to kill them before they reach their destination. At the moment I'm leaning towards the giants being interconnected platforms that move in a set rotation or pattern, and the fun is jumping around this giant trying to defend it from a bunch of smaller enemies, but I'll have to see if that's achievable or fun. I think it could be as long as the player has enough tools to move around easily.

 

Anyway, that's the idea. Now to try and figure out how to structure this to be interesting/fun/at all feasible in less than 2 weeks.

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Hey, so I've done a bit of an about-turn on this one, as making a platformer and having it do the stuff I wanted to do was proving a little bit too much for me. So instead I'm making half-a-dozen little games that will tell a story as the player goes through them.

 

I'm aiming for 5-10 minutes of gameplay at the most. Here's a couple of .gifs of the first two games, an osu-alike:

And a sawing simulator:

The art needs some work, but I'm happy with the direction the game is going. Mostly I just wanted to tell the story of this clan, so minimal mechanics games work pretty well for that. Anyway, very much hoping I can get it done by the weekend!

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New Wizard Jam mascot: GIANT FOOT

 

Looks like it's coming along, and looks like it will be fun!

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Post mortem time!

My game changed significantly from my first post. When I started this WJ I was kind of in a shitty place mentally, so going after something ambitious like a platformer with unique mechanics wasn't a great idea. I ended up staring at my screen for a few days before doing an about turn and focusing on achievable chunks of in the form of mini games that I could string together with a loose, spoken plot.

 

Making mini games isn't as easy as it looks! I found that every game that I thought of as mini was actually not that mini. I had an idea to put in a Jezzball clone, but that soaked up two days before I realised it was too complicated. After that I focused on extremely simple games (one of which could be argued whether it's even a game) and tried my best to tie them together with the basic story I was developing in the background. I definitely have newfound respect for the Warioware guys. It's not easy coming up with ideas for mini games! Though I guess I was a bit more constrained int hat they had to make sense in the context of the story, but still. Props to inventive, imaginative peeps.

 

Things I learned:

1) How to walk away from an idea - I think this was a good one to learn! I was able to walk away from multiple ideas, including my big main one, during the course of this jam. Too hard, too complicated, or not fun are all good reasons not to follow through with something during a jam. Of course, knowing how to walk away is a different thing to knowing how to recognise those things in your own game, but I'm glad I was able to do both.

2) Even a simple story is better than none at all - I'm actually pretty happy with the words I put together for this one. I used to write a lot of fiction and it felt good to put that old pair of jeans back on.

3) How not to lean on state machines for everything - I tend to set up every single object I ever create with state machines because they are what I'm used to working with, even for non-AI functions. I did less of that in this project and felt pretty good about it.

 

Anyway, hope everyone/someone enjoys my game. Big thanks to @zerofiftyone for being the organiser of this event (his game looks ace!) and to everyone in the slack (@Travis and @Mythalore especially) who encouraged me and kept me entertained. Can't wait to stream and play all the other entries! :D

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After googling Osu, I worked out what to do, but it's too hard for me, I'm afraid! Nice writing from what I heard, though!

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After your update, I was able to complete the osu portion and the rest of the game! (I am really bad at osu games, so I am a poor metric). I enjoyed all of the minigames, and the story was fantastic. I enjoy how you kept the story details sparse and intriguing. You have the perfect voice for this story, too. The calming nature sounds kept me chill while I tried to figure out each task. Following the circle on the body was pretty tough for me, but I have this dumb sensitive GAMER mouse which I think is bad for this kind of situation. The crane game was a cinch since I've played a lot of Track & Field at the arcade. 

 

This was a neat project based on a simply horrific title!

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Thanks @Travis! I'm glad you were able to get through everything. I was thinking maybe I could let the radius of the mouse being in the circle on the body be a little more loose since I had similar issues with my l337 gaming mouse, but I guess we'll see if anyone says they absolutely 100% can't get through that level. Heh, my voice isn't usually that calm, I had to deliberately slow down my speech and I actually pitched it down 5% in Audacity to try and get that older councilman vibe going! Thanks again for playing through mate, really looking forward to enjoying everyone's efforts and returning the favour in a couple of days!

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The strange fairytale framing the minigames was a good and interesting element. I was starting to get really frustrated with the Osu and follow the circle* parts - "Philllll, these are clearly way too difficult, well let me just focus and try one more time.... oh, that wasn't too bad" but got through them in the end ^_^


* At first I thought I was dragging instead of following the circle but I understood it after a couple of tries, and you explain it on the itch page.

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What an imaginative story and world. I'm impressed by how smoothly the narrative zooms through an entire lifetime, and your acting gives it weight throughout. I got stuck on the first level a couple of days ago, but I went back to it today and had no trouble. Either there was a patch, or I found my osu flow state.

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On 2017-6-25 at 7:09 AM, atte said:

The strange fairytale framing the minigames was a good and interesting element. I was starting to get really frustrated with the Osu and follow the circle* parts - "Philllll, these are clearly way too difficult, well let me just focus and try one more time.... oh, that wasn't too bad" but got through them in the end ^_^


* At first I thought I was dragging instead of following the circle but I understood it after a couple of tries, and you explain it on the itch page.

 

Yeah I thought about going back and making it super easy given how much people's mouse sensitivity changes between computers but then I thought it could go either way depending on what kind of system they are on. Woe to anyone who tries that game on a trackpad! :S

 

1 hour ago, getinthedamnbox said:

What an imaginative story and world. I'm impressed by how smoothly the narrative zooms through an entire lifetime, and your acting gives it weight throughout. I got stuck on the first level a couple of days ago, but I went back to it today and had no trouble. Either there was a patch, or I found my osu flow state.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed the story! I used to do a lot of fiction writing so it was lovely to get back into that mode. MAkes me think that maybe narrative games could be something I could focus on for the next few jams I do. And yes, I did tune down the difficulty of the osu game a few days ago so I'm glad you could get through it. I didn't want people bouncing off the first stage!

 

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5 hours ago, nkornek said:

Pretty neat! I really liked the story but some of the games were really hard!

 

Thanks nkornek! I added a skip cheat button yesterday so if you got stuck on any of them you can go back and skip them. I'm really happy people liked the story, I worked on that quite a bit even though it was so short! :D

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