My artist and I participated in the real one hour game jam. We prepped with 15 ideas. All Atari 2600 game ideas with a twist.  The theme was announced as “When Pigs Fly.” Not the worst theme. I knew right what to go for. Idea #14.

My friend got in a lot of art that was just too much to use. A title screen and more than a few enemies than I could use. He threw me off my game by giving me parrots and toads as enemies. Since there’s only an hour, there was almost no talking between us. I told him a list of 3 things. Prop, player, enemies. Then he went to it and I went to it. Talking only used valuable programming time.

A few people did Flappy Pig which is understandable with an hour, we put a twist on it that made it stand out. I just barely got a playable game finished for what I envisioned it to be; score and fun. I failed making a level system. There were a few bugs and issues, but hey in an hour I wasn’t aiming for perfection, I was going for wow factor.

The bugs include the pig dropping a frame before the balloons. The pig can leave the screen to the left. Parrots leaving the screen would leave their balloons. White text on a bright background. There are probably more and the video will show them.

The funny thing is that the hosts playing the game on Twitch felt bad for killing the birds as enemies, yet never felt bad for any of the other enemies in the dozen or so entries. Also are they really dead when you don’t see if they hit the ground?

We kept making the game as the hosts played the other games. Now we have something considerable to show and we’ve kept it going an entire week now. I will post more tomorrow.

Now for the making of video.