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Global Game Jam 2018

Having spent the past 2 months working on both the Microcosm Framework and Super Blasty Blasty V2, I felt that I needed a bit of a change of pace and decided to join in with #GlobalGameJam2018. This was the perfect opportunity to put the framework into action with a fresh project that could be far smaller scope than Super Blasty Blasty V2. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any time on the Friday or Saturday to take part but I wasn’t ready to let that stop me taking part, so on Sunday morning, I set myself a challenge to get something built and “released” in 12 hours.

Needless to say, this was a bit ambitious. But I did it! My initial plan had been to get a fully polished release on the Google Play Store in these 12 hours, looking back this was a ridiculous goal. The version I quote unquote released was far from polished, but it was functional on Android devices and had some great features, mostly thanks to the Microcosm Framework doing its job exceptionally well in saving me development time.

The core idea I went with was a fairly simple game based on a platform jumping mechanic, the higher a player could climb the larger the score becomes. It was very similar to the classic mobile game Doodle Jump. This was an intentional decision during the very small design process and it served 2 purposes. One was there couldn’t really be feature creep for such a simple mechanic and two, using a game as a reference makes it very easy to track how development is coming along. If I were to take part in another game jam on such a restricted timeframe I would definitely employ this tactic again.

To capture the essence of how simple the game was I gave it the title of Jumpy Blob, this summed up both the core mechanic and main character in one so it seemed very fitting. This was my first game jam of 2018 (first game jam since University actually) and it definitely ignited the spark in me that loved creating things in such a short amount of time, I’m hoping to take part in several more jams during the year, especially if they result in endproducts similar to what this one produced.

So after such a small amount of time spent developing I was very pleased with how it turned out, I will definitely continue to work on this game moving forward, giving it the polish it deserves. Until it makes it to the Google Play Store you can see some of the screenshots from the game at the time of its first release in the gallery below.