3Become1

About

Seeking to challenge myself I entered the GMTK Game Jam 2019 having 48 hours to create a game based on a simple cue, “only one”. After some back and forth over several ideas a friend suggested ‘one button’ and I ran with the idea of using one button 3 ways. I started by getting the controls working based on the idea of a Tap, Double Tap and Held interactions of one button, space. To easily build out a level I quickly got to grips with Sprite Shape in Unity and used free assets online to give a better look.

As I iterated the game the idea of doing a platformer using one key appealed to me and as it began to come together I identified a theme of the journey of life. I created a map where trickier jumps and routes led to a warm sunny area where as simply moving to the right and falling off platforms lead the player to a cold icy place. The idea became that by pushing yourself to do the harder things had greater rewards and so I included three different endings each with a relevant quote sourced from the internet.

Post Mortem

As an exercise in testing my abilities this was a huge success for me improving my self confidence to achieve something I set out to do under my own steam. It was also a good lesson in time management, although I had booked the weekend off and okayed my absence with my wife I still managed to sit down to family meals and play with my kids keeping a good work/life balance over the weekend.

In terms of the game itself although it works as a whole and has few bugs it needed a lot more testing as it was far too hard to get the mid and higher endings, primarily down the controls being too floaty. I decided to add two ‘pickups’ in the form of a partner character and a child character but stripped air control and double jump from the original inputs to use as a reward. This addition was also not communicated at all in the game so I doubt anyone would have realised that reaching these characters gave these controls to the player.