Octopus Escape - Unity Based Game.

There are so many youtube videos of people developing games in two days for a game jam, and it is inspiring as hell. You can see the entire project from start to finish. You can see them brainstorm, design moving parts as barebones blocks, get frustrated at code, and then see the incredible final transformation. These videos are glorious and motivating. If you're like me, you'll think, "I could do this." In my experience, participating in a game jam is vastly different from what those videos would lead you to believe. The videos skim over code, trivialize the brainstorming, and severely undercut the making of assets and programming. I was inspired and eager to try and find out for myself. Taking on the 48-hour coding challenge, I signed up for GMTK's 2020 Game Jam.

The Game Maker's Tool Kit theme in 2020 was "Out of Control." The topic posed a difficult task, and it was hard to develop an idea for it. After a long brainstorm session, I came up with the idea that you don't control your character. The idea was that you would give the character commands, and then it would execute those commands. Developing the game was a huge challenge and a long 48 hours. By the end, I had created something that I was proud to have made. Pixel art was a growing interest of mine, and I drew all of the assets in Aseprite. GMTK Game Jam YouTube Video.

The version in this browser has had a lot of tweaking done to it. Some of the improvements include:

• ignore the delay between level load and the first movement
• make the first few levels easier
• create a move intuitive tutorial
• lessen the distance to the end
• added levels select
• added practice mode

Many of these reforms came from the comment section of our submission, where others had played it.
You can read the comments here on the Submission Page
You can play the old version of the game on Itch.io: