The Old Ball and Chain

About

Sisyphus has been punished for cheating death (twice) and must eternally push a boulder up a mountain in Hell. But did anyone bother to tell him that? Tethered to your rock, you must navigate through this literal hell scape to fight your way back to the land of the living. Will you make it out? Find out in this new puzzle platformer adventure!

Process

By now GMTK Game Jam has become my yearly tradition, it often falls on my birthday weekend so is a little treat to myself. This years was ‘Joined Together’ and had a team finder function to allow solo developers to join up, as I was working with the team at Freesphere Entertainment at this time and enjoyed interacting with discord groups in previous jams I put myself forward as a programmer to work with others this year.

After I set up the in engine source control the team quickly came up with the idea of the player being joined to something and eventually the idea of a object that restricts movement unless the player carries it. Quickly seeing the connection between this and the myth of Sisyphus we applied a Greek mythology theme to the ideas including a Medusa who’s gaze can be blocked with the boulder.

In prototyping the idea we came up with the idea of throwing the boulder to get it to other levels and playing with the Unity physics joints I quickly prototyped the idea of the of the player being able to climb the chain up surfaces or reduce the length so they would be propelled with it when thrown. We had many issues with the Unity 2D joints system not responding correctly and losing connection so we had to resort to a single Distance joint instead with me implementing ‘Verlet Integration’ to render the hang of the chain between the character and boulder even setting up a mid point in the for where the player is holding the chain allowing the previous mechanics to remain.

Post Mortem

I enjoyed working with the team and I’m happy with the outcome but the ‘Pick Up Group’ nature of the experience meant I would be looking for people I’m more familiar with in future when collaborating.