Super Rushed Jam Launch!

I was opening Godot 3.2 Beta 2 once again to create something. Would I work on a project I should be working on? Too tedious for the moment. Should I work on my commercial project? Too hard for the moment. I NEED MOTIVATION!

So, I hopped on Discord to find a jam and was curious if Godot Wild Jam had started. I ONLY HAD 7 HOURS LEFT TO CREATE A GAME ENTRY FOR IT! Would this deter me? Would I find a different more reasonable jam? Absolutely NOT! I saw that 7 hours as a challenge of my dev skills! Could I create a cohesive game that's mildly fun in these 7 hours? That was the question I needed an answer too.

While this game Lost Elves originally was a bit more cool with the mechanic that enemies would follow your last known location that updated every time you moved but you could sacrifice some time to move silently. 2 hours in and I was having weird bug errors, my two young siblings begging for my guidance as they embarked on their first Pokemon adventure; and the frustration of weird AI I just couldn't seem to fix and knew I didn't have the time to fix. Those two hours were my do or die hours; and the feature died. BUT! I did not surrender! I reformed the game into a tile based dungeon crawler with randomly moving AI which wasn't far from what I was doing anyways.

I created some character art in RPG Maker MV, then I used some SFX and music I owned, messaged my girlfriend about doing some voice lines; and started piecing everything together once again!

I put together two fun characters, threw myself in as an unlockable secret character after you beat the game; and wanted to add my girlfriend as a secret character as well as a surprise. I created a fun little character selection screen with named characters and fun bios to tease some lore.

Everything was working out until the last 2 hours which is when I realized how much work I had left to do; and I totally didn't panic pfft (Maybe just a tad). I had yet to create a decent combat system which included a janky sprite for a janky animation. My mouse has been working half of the time, Godot keeps slowing down and crashing; my computer is saying "NO U" and everything is seeming impossible...

ONCE AGAIN I DID NOT SURRENDER AND PUSHED THE GAME FORWARD! Would this be the most original game? No. Would it be the game that was the most fun? No. But you know what? It was MY game that I made in 7ish hours and I would never forgive myself for giving up this far. I could always fix things up later on if people liked the concept.

I created the combat system in 10 minutes which included the 10 seconds I had to create a candy cane sword sprite. The style of animation I had to go for to have a combat system actually reminded me of the very first game jam I ever did with some friends which was really nostalgic <3 And it actually worked! Pretty crazy such a rushed mechanic turned out pretty decent. Then I quickly made the character select actually matter, hid my secret character and added in some more SFX. At this point I was finishing half done things and polishing them some; because having something strong and some weak things seemed better than a bunch of weak things.

Down to the final 30 minutes, after creating the combat you'd assume I'd start building levels right? Well I would have if Godot didn't take half a century to load up my game. I don't know if it's Godot or my computer but testing a game takes far too long, like literally takes 5-10 minutes which right now is WAY too much time. But I can't just add in levels I can't beat and if I have just horrible levels it shows I clearly pushed the wrong things first; which to be fair I did but I also didn't anticipate this super long load to test levels out. At this rate the VOX I had are gonna be cut most likely, there's only going to be maybe a level per floor or less floors; and the end dialogue is definitely out of the question. Actually, the game isn't even beatable yet, when you clear the final floor it just goes to negative floors left. There's far too much to do, but then again; isn't that just jam life? To have too much work, be exhausted yet still functional; pushing yourself to the human limits to finish a game.

I quickly slapped down 4 more dungeons to make a grand total of 5 dungeons to beat; which isn't a large variety but it gets the point across for now. And then Godot crashed two more times taking up another 5 minutes, so these dungeons are assumed to be able to be beat; no time to test them. I threw together the ending which used at least my girlfriend's voice lines; so only the female elf actually has VOX; still valid for the wild card! Tossing in some snowflake particles, the last 10 minutes of this jam were INTENSE! 

Sadly the game wasn't ready in time....now it was ready as much as it could be; but saving the final time took SO long that I couldn't reasonably export it in time. Sad face.

Now I've finished as much as humanely possible. I'm ready to polish and get things ready for a post launch game! I'm excited to see what others have made! I'm happy that I was able to enter a halfway decent game in only 7 hours. And this recap of what happened this jam is finished. There was two critical bugs that took too much time to fix; without them this may have been published on time to enter.

Now I'm off to working on another project I need to work on and see how initial reactions to this game turn out :)