Our first game and Game Jam!

Hi, we're Isaac (7), Asher (9), and Dylan (their dad).

We've created our first game, and it was done in just 48 hours for the GMTK 2020 Game Jam!

Everything in the game was created this weekend, even the music. Well almost everything, the background image of the houses we found on Google images.

How we prepared

Because we didn't know the theme of the Game Jam until it started, we spent the last few weeks practicing in different ways...

Being creative

We made up our own themes and tried to think of game ideas around those themes. 

Some themes we brainstormed with:

• Family
• Space
• Zombie Apocalypse
• Underwater

Learning the tools

We spent 30-60 minutes every night up to the Game Jam creating a practice game using the tool we picked to use, Construct. 

• We made a simple game where you are a fire engine and need to put out fires. This helped us get familiar with the tool.
• We watched tutorial videos. These were kind of boring for us.
• We played with lots of sample projects. This helped us learn about the capabilities of Construct, like physics and sprites, and what we might want to do with it.

Starting the Game Jam

We learned about the theme, Out of Control, at the start of the jam. The first thing we did was write our ideas on paper. We then each picked our own favorite idea and drew what  the game might look like.

• Asher created Dog Disaster, a game where you are a dog that makes a mess of a house.
• Isaac created FrostIce, the idea that became the game we built.
• Dylan created Untitled Tree Game, where you need to cut branches from a crazy tree.

Prototyping

We prototyped Asher's idea and loved it, but thought it would be difficult to finish in time. The next day we prototyped Isaac's and thought it was going to great fun to play and finishable in the short time we had - just one more day.

Building the game

Isaac and Asher used Incredibox for the music, and their own voices for the sound effects.

We did the art in Construct.

We tested on their ipads.

We used a Google doc to track our tasks and prioritize the nice-to-have's vs the must-do's.

Releasing the game

Isaac thought we were not going to finish in time! But we did! We finished adding the sound effects and fixing the last big bugs in the final 5 minutes! It was thrilling, and we are still shaking from the excitement as write this.

Please vote for us

Create an itch.io account so you vote for us! We would also love your feedback!

Thank you for playing our game, Snowball Tsunami!