JAM GAME - THEME “Water”
Group PROJECT - Designer
March - 2021
Tasked with making a game responding to the water crisis our team wanted several goals. Firstly we wanted to ensure that our game was not specifically focusing on any given race/people/gender. As such all story and characters are purposefully abstract. Secondly, we wanted to focus on the idea of water being a scarce resource. Tying the player’s progress to it. Earlier levels/challenges would have abundant water, allowing the player to waste it, while later levels would feature very limited water, hitting home this feeling of preciousness.
A whiteboard image of the first path the player would follow to the first well. Some ideas stayed, some were shelved due to limited art assets.
To achieve this, every time the player jumps they consume water by spilling it. The final challenge of the game requires the player to use all of their water perfectly, testing their skill, but also hitting home the difficulty.
We wanted one level, firstly to save on resources, as 24 hours was not sufficient to create and test multiple levels, but also to give a feeling of repetition, and of the world changing as days go on, as the wells fall into disrepair.
A pixelated image of our level, outlining the jump heights, the wells players would visit on given days, and all the jumps, ensuring the player could reach them all.
I designed the level, initially on a whiteboard, then in paint as time went on. Focusing on the height of the player’s jump as well as the number of jumps.
Response and Self-Assessment
The game feels satisfying and tight to control, along with beautiful sound and graphics provided by our artist and audio designer. The game gets across the intended meaning, and we’ve received positive feedback from those who have played the game. Overall I’m happy with the game, but would have liked to have several hours more to polish the game, improve the tutorial, and fix several bugs, however that is the nature of a Game Jam.
Play online
If you would like to play the game for yourself, you can click the link below to be taken to the Itch.io page, and run it in your browser.