Confessions of a Game Jam Newbie: From Couch Cushions to Space Colonies

Damage Control(I should have called it DMG CTRL) was the first game I released publicly to itch.io. It was a part of a game jam a few years ago. The gimmick was to use 5 colors or less, and create a gameplay loop that centered around POWER.

AAAAAA

So, as a guy who started gaming during the 2600 era, I immediately thought of making an Atari style game. I'm sure there's a low of other ways to meet the requirements for this challenge, but I'm also sure the best ideas aren't relevant in a situation that sees you doing things on a tight deadline. 

For those who don't know, the whole game jam thing is an exercise in stress management. You have a very short time frame for creating and releasing your games. It's a concept that was thought up by a masochist and probably has led to a lot of people calling it quits on their game dev dreams.

The Deciders

As the always positive and never snarky at all when uncomfortable type, I simply decided to roll with the Bald Bull(shit) punches of this ritual in self creative harm. It was my choice, after all. I like the idea of needing to go with a plan, and avoiding the urge to back out at the last second. Developing a habit of this could make someone become more Bush-like with their deciding skills.

With it being an Atari inspired game, I figured doing a space shooter would be the most obvious thing. Here's the description I wrote for the game page:

You are tasked with destroying space junk that is threatening to to crash into an old Space Colony.

they have a large group of pirates set to mess up your colony, if too much junk finds its way into their hull.

Survive for two minutes, by shooting space junk, and space pirates with turrets placed within the play field.  Power meter drains while attached, so you'll need to disengage often, otherwise you'll run out of energy, and fail to shoot.

Reading this takes me back to flipping through game manuals, and skimming the story blurbs for a few minutes, before seemingly having the instructions fall into a random void somewhere near the underside of the couch. I've lost a lot of stuff due to those couch voids. I think that's why you often find spare change in the cushions. it's like the couch fairy is operating a pawn shop in another dimension, and you get 0.05% of their profits. I tried to renegotiate by leaving a bite sized Snickers under the couch, but it didn't work.

**checks "Please stay on topic for once, you absolute goober" notes**

I don't know how many ACTUAL space games are on Atari 2600. I assume it's a lot.  Funny thing is, most of the games that come to mind are not really advertised as being in space.

We're talking Night Driver, Donkey Kong, Atlantis, Towering Inferno, etc. 3 of these games are awesome and people should go back and enjoy them. One of them has a much better point on the NES, and any other console that ever came out after Atari. Go play any of those other versions and pretend the 2600 port is a homebrew or something.

Almost as if on purpose, I've named only games that all have black background graphics. So, using the THICC essence of your imagination, enhanced by the extreme limitations of old computer hardware from the bygone era that brought us the eventual video game crash. This same event caused Sega and Nintendo rise like the Phoenix seen in the 90s X-Men cartoon. Much like the Dark Phoenix, they terrorized our parents wallets while constantly shouting "SEGA!!" or "PLAY IT LOUD!!", which is a more marketing oriented way of saying "I CAN'T CONTROL IT!!" You can imagine all of those games operating within some sort of 4:3 fish bowl that floats aimlessly among the stars.

Just like Bayley, my imagination is very healthy looking.

Speaking of Control, I wanted the gimmick to center around two turrets being piloted by one character. You had to switch between the two of them to destroy space junk being deployed from a rival colony. If too many pieces of scrap hit your base, it was game over, and you just had to sit at the computer and deal with the heaviness of knowing that this could have all been avoided, but you just wanted to prove how quick you were with the trigger and do it all yourself. I hope you're happy with the result.

There was a graduation party for Leopold Yari. He was going to be the first person in his family to ever be accepted into the Outer Haven Mech Security Unit. Because of your recklessness, and frustratingly low accuracy, he'll never get to place the family crest designed by his great grandmother onto the left shoulder of the mech suit designated to him for his outstanding ability to be lively in the face of certain doom.

you monster...

Yeah, that game was an experience to make. I unfortunately had no foresight whatsoever, and only exported a windows version. There was no way to know that I'd soon be moving over to Chrome OS, and scrambling to find Linux versions of my favorite programs. What couldn't be found, was replaced. I'm better off ditches certain apps anyway, and Clickteam was one of the losers on the list.

Didn't Clickteam Fusion have an HTML 5 export? I could have embedded the game on itch, but the deadline for submissions had crepted up on me, and I was already panicking over how slow my upload speeds were.