A Week in the Life

Trijam #328: Consume your health for power

Timeframe : 3 hours (with pauses throughout the day)

Although the theme for this jam leaned heavily toward a more traditional "attack/defence" game, we wanted to approach it from a different angle.  

A week in the life, although short and buggy, was an exploration of how we as individuals will often neglect our health in an attempt to meet deadlines. The idea behind it was that the player would engage in detrimental behaviours such as not eating or sleeping to get more work done.

Although the character played is a game developer, this can apply to any profession.

For this project, there were two things I wanted to focus on from a design perspective:

• Add a small animation in the title screen, such as curtains blowing in the wind. 
• Have clear visual indicators of what items or areas the player can interact with.

Although the gameplay mechanics were simple (the player goes through a series of options to try and achieve their goal),  as we only had 3 hours, time ran out when adding the base values to the options, and we had a limited amount of time to test. Although you can win and lose, the game is highly unbalanced. This is a common issue we encounter when participating in a jam, but we're improving at reaching the testing stage, even within the 3-hour timeframe.

 We like to use these jams to very quickly prototype game ideas. That doesn't mean that we haven't learnt how to approach these. Unlike traditional jams, where we're given 72 hours or so to work, these 3-hour jams force us to lock in, and we can quickly tell if the idea we've chosen is something we're vibing with or not.  

We did experience some wins during the jam:

• We were able to implement all the discussed gameplay mechanics.
• Got a little bit more familiar with Godot's animation system.
• We were able to make all interactable items visually distinct from the non-interactable ones.
• Managed to add some background music that fit the overall tone.

There were definitely some losses too:

• Although we managed to get all the discussed gameplay mechanics, they are buggy:
  • The day/night cycle doesn't work very well. 
    • During the day, the player chooses what they do, i.e. eat, go outside, work, sleep. Ideally, there should be a hard cutoff at night where a task will finish, and a pop-up shows up, and the player decides to either pull an all-nighter or go to bed. 
  • How long a task takes is not indicated at all.
    • The player does not know how long a task takes; they are only told what effect the task will have on their health and work progress.
      • This issue is further exacerbated because the player is not informed of the time.
        • Even though players are told what day it is, not knowing how much time they have left in a day makes it hard for the players to strategise properly.

We will likely continue working on this project gradually, addressing gameplay issues and updating the art as needed.