Squires

[Released] Christmas is Cancelled

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Happy Holidays!

 

Inspired by this festive season, I've decided to create an Overcooked-style, task management game, where the goal is to get your chores done while keeping the pesky yule lads at bay. In order to keep scope reasonable I will likely only include 1 or 2 types of chores, but am considering adding a twist that will allow you to "cut corners", getting your work done faster, but increasing the likelihood of a visit from Gryla, the child-eating mother of the yule-lads.

 

(source: Important if True 20: Christmas is Cancelled)

 

 

 

Edit: Christmas is Canceled has been released and you can download it here - https://squires.itch.io/christmas-is-cancelled

 

The Christmas holiday is upon the wintery Scandinavian countryside, and you've been tasked by your mother with preparing the sausages for the festivities. Unbeknownst to her though, the Yule Lads of lore are more than just bed time stories, and some of them have arrived to frustrate your sausage preparation duties.

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Spent the latter half of the day attempting to do some future proofing organizing the image layers and, as well as adding in cooking.

 

 

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Between work, class, and holiday stuff, it's been a pretty hectic week. I've rethought how I wanted the game to work and made it way more compact. This was primarily for aesthetic reasons (which I hope to get working on soon), but I also think it will help the game feel more focused and less empty.
 

 

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I like the more zoomed in feel. Looks like a good choice that will still allow for some stressful time management.

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The game is starting to actually get to a decent point now, though due to some changes in plans with family/holiday stuff, I'm definitely further behind than I'd like to be. Regardless, I think I can get it to a decent point by Sunday evening. The basic sausage prep loop is ready, so what's left to implement is the overall game (ingredient spawning, delivery, and scoring), yule lad interference, and art. We'll see if that's attainable based on how much I get done tomorrow, but here's where it's at for now...

 

 

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Good to hear you are making progress! I like the game idea a lot.

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So I figured out today that I've been doing state machines wrong; well not exactly wrong, but inefficiently (I'm an artist, not a coder). Once I went back through the code and fixed that, the rest kind of it kind of snapped into place. It still looks ugly, but there's a full gameloop now with raw meat refreshing on the empty meat hook, and delivering a smoked sausage to the door increasing your score.

 

My goal for tomorrow is to get a timer/countdown, a basic menu (new game/quit), and yule lad shenanigans, in before New Years festivities start with the family. Any art is almost certainly going to be a "post-launch" update.

 

Anyway, here's a GIF of dishwashing, sausage smoking, and sausage delivery:

 

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I took full advantage of the extension and released the game with a couple minuted to spare. It doesn't have everything I wanted to include (but does it ever?) but I'm happy with completing a functional thing and learning multiple things about GML, especially with the Holidays and family time factored in. Over the next week, I hope to updated it with art (the thing I'm actually decent at) and a functioning menu.

 

https://squires.itch.io/christmas-is-cancelled

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It's such an evocative scene already so I'm very excited for the art update!

 

+ GM tip: When creating the executable you can choose 'Single runtime executable' to avoid having a full installer for the game.

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18 hours ago, atte said:

+ GM tip: When creating the executable you can choose 'Single runtime executable' to avoid having a full installer for the game.

 Oh man, that's so much better. Thanks!

 

I updated the game with that change, along with a menu that actually works, and some bug-fixes. Hope to do one more update to add in art later in the week.

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I was looking forward to checking out your Yule Lads! It looks like your submission is marked as Mac compatible but only has a Windows download. I'll try to check it out later this weekend from a PC.

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I think the steps of making sausage are well thought out. Some animations or additional assets (like sausages hanging in the last step) would help, but I got the hang of it eventually without those as well. 

 

Damn those Yule Lads.

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