Save Our Senior
Killing grandma has never been more fun!
Overview:
Save Our Senior is a 2D side-scrolling platformer game, where the player must assist an elderly grandmother through a dangerous construction site via platforming.
Save Our Senior was a submission for the Unwrap Jam 2023. It was created by a team of five people, myself included.
Our team spent three days in total to complete the game, from February 14th to February 16th.
Save Our Senior went on to win 2nd place in the Jury Ranking.
My Contribution:
Main Gameplay Programmer
Acted as co-Team Manager alongside one of my teammates
General Info:
Save Our Senior was the second game jam I participated in. I immediately utilized my experience from the previous game jam to help make the development pipeline more smooth.
I, alongside one of my teammates, became duo project managers, making sure that everything was on time and that progress was going along smoothly. I constantly communicated with our other teammates to see their progress as well as determine if we needed to pivot and refocus our efforts elsewhere.
In addition to assisting in leading the project, I also was in charge of most of the gameplay programming and implementing the level design within the game.
As a result of this project, I became much more comfortable with leading a team, as well as understanding when it was necessary to pivot, as we had to constantly make cuts so our game would be complete before the deadline.
Brainstorming:
As this was a short Game Jam, we focused on efforts to make sure brainstorming was quick and fast. After several hours of brainstorming, the group eventually settled on an idea, where the player must guide a grandma that automatically moves through a dangerous area by pulling switches and pressing buttons.
Initially, I had reservations about the idea, as I initially thought the gameplay would be a little too boring. However, my teammates convinced me otherwise, and I decided to place my faith in them and their belief that a fun game would come out of the project, even though I wasn’t fully on board with the idea.
In the end, I’m very glad that my teammates convinced me to believe in the project since we ended up winning 2nd place in the Jury Rankings. It goes to show how important how having differing opinions and viewpoints in a group is very important!
Programming:
As this was a short game jam, the project scale was nowhere near the level of Heartbeat in terms of complexity. The more simplistic game mechanics as well as my confidence boost from working on said game allowed me to quickly code in the core gameplay mechanics by the end of the first day of the Game Jam, such as player movement, levers that cause doors to open/platforms to move, and the old grandma dying if she gets crushed or falls from any height.
Project Management:
As stated earlier, one of my fellow teammates, Joran, and I became de-facto team leaders for the project.
At the beginning of each day, we would quickly discuss what the goals for the day were to be as well as regularly check the group’s progress to make sure everything was on track.
Over the course of the project, both of us came to the realization that aspects of the game needed to be cut or pivoted should we want to turn in the project before the deadline.
One of these cuts was the length of the stage, as the time needed to not only build the level in Unity but also playtest and fix any bugs would take way too long and cause us to exceed our time limit. At the beginning of the final day of the Game Jam, we informed our team of our worries and as a result, the entire team agreed on scrapping most of the unfinished sections of the level and only focus on working on the parts that were already implemented.
The hardest cut to make was informing our two artists that they would need to scrap all their work and start looking for free assets instead, as at their current rate, we would not be able to implement all the assets we would need. It was a really tough decision, especially since our two artists had essentially been working for an entire day, and telling them to scrap all their hard efforts would be really demoralizing for them. However, it was necessary, since we were running out of time and we could not afford to waste more time on creating art when there was only a day and a half left for the Game Jam.
Level Creation:
After coding all of the core gameplay mechanics, I was then tasked to start building out the level in Unity using the designs created by our Level Designer. As this was the first time I had created a project in Unity 2D, I got to learn how to use tilemaps to quickly build levels.
One of the most important takeaways from this project I learned was the importance of Rule Tiles. Utilizing these drastically removes most of the monotony of placing tiles one by one. It would also automatically make sure the tiles were all facing the right way.
I am 100% confident in saying that without Rule Tiles, our game would’ve never been turned in before the deadline.
Takeaways:
Learning how to better manage time and knowing when it’s time to cut aspects of our game
Becoming a better team manager and communicating with our group
A better understanding of Unity 2D and Rule Tiles
Realizing the importance of differing opinions and viewpoints within a group to create a better project