GAME JAM: DAY ONE

This week’s jam theme over at WeeklyGameJam is titled Don’t Touch It! and I’m going to attempt an entry in just a few days. Here is my progress after day one.

I’m going to keep the game simple, really simple. I planned out a couple of ideas on paper and this is the one I preferred, it involves a couple of circles. The smaller one glides steadily around the screen, visiting random locations whilst the larger circle is controlled by your mouse. The idea is to continually surround the smaller circle without the two circles ever touching.

This idea worked well straight out the gate though it lacked any sort of challenge. I did trial the concept of steadily increasing the speed of the obstacle but what really worked well was decreasing the size of the player’s circle. This really added a challenge to the task.

Next came coding the Game Over scenario. This simply stops the game when the two circles come into contact but adding a simple visual indicator makes it clear to the player what has happened.

Right from the start, this simple game had a very retro feel to it. I decided to play on this theme further by adding additional graphics to complete the look and feel of the game. It even has the old CRT scan lines that move randomly down the screen.

At the end of the first day I think I have made good progress and the game plays well. Tomorrow’s list is quickly growing with a title screen, scoring system and background graphics taking priority.