The Making of ‘Tiny Trouble’ @ Touhou Pride Game Jam 4

This would be my fourth game jam. We do not talk about what happened in the third one.

It was the end of the semester, two weeks into the jam (right after I was done with the finals). I saw an artist (Callie Calico) going around with her concept art of a Kirby-like Touhou-themed platformer, and I decided to make her game a reality. I’m partly impressed by her passion, but the more practical side of this would be that I needed a “proper” platformer after what had happened with Lucid Dive.

It soon became clear to me that my partner hadn’t actually planned properly for what was supposed to be an LGBT-centered game jam (e.g. actual story), and that did end up hurting the ratings of the game. The only LGBT-ish idea in the game is a rather-obscure feature where you can have the main characters kiss to feed over-heals to each other.

However, it was halfway into a month-long jam. Beggars can’t be choosers - either I took the offer, or I wouldn’t be in the jam at all.

Aside from this sour spot, the development was actually a smooth experience, despite having less time and manpower compared to other teams.

While obviously, with just one programmer, there’s no synchronization issues to worry about, there was the worry of the artist not being able to deliver assets in time. I like to think that frequent implementation updates from my side helped with the team’s morale, encouraging her to put more hours on production.

I like to believe that us developers are the heart of a team. Although we often do dirty plumbing work that aren’t always visible, we are the source of motivation for other parts of the team (e.g. artists), and by providing implementation results of game features frequently, they would be more motivated to push the final product to greater heights.

This is why I am interested in software architecture - not because it looks pretty and comfy, but because it enables swift deliveries of new features (or feature changes), keeping a game dev team lively.

All in all, I think I did a much better job than last time, despite having much less time and resources. The game feels very complete and mechanically tight. There might not be much innovation (e.g. weird, experimental gimmicks), but it is still a solid platformer in itself, and a game I would be willing to extend into a full product.

Though that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon.