Game Jam Devlog! - Making a Reverse Horror Survival Game from scratch in 10 days

This game jam devlog is about a reverse-horror game I made this Spooktober Seaason to capture the spirit of Halloween, complete with occasional buggy AI and a player controlled monster right out of the Cthulhu mythos. I think Halloween might just be my favourite holiday (I'm a fan of candy), and I've always wanted to make a spooky game set in a city amongst my fellow trick-or-treaters. This was done for SCREAMJAM 2020, a 10 day game jam held between October 13th to 23rd hosted by Caveware Digital.

This devlog is meant to be both entertaining, and a high level summary of all the tools and skills required to make a game in an extremely limited amount of time (a bit less than 40 hours spent, during which I had about 5 quizzes and an electronics midterm!). A full summary of the tools I used, which are all free, can be found below.

Play Sugar and Sinew here, for free! https://wintrmut3.itch.io/sugar-and-sinew

Game Summary:
You can whisper dread secrets into the minds of nearby children in pirate costumes, luring them back to a rift that tore the cosmos asunder, feeding the entity imprisoned on the other side with their flesh and gathered candy. Try not to be sighted, as scared trick-or-treaters will form groups and then rush you in their sugar-fueled frenzy. Beat the clock and collect powerups, and return your master to this realm before time runs out. Average playtime will be about 5 minutes, though you may want to spend more time relaxing and watching the Trick-or-Treaters explore their neighbourhood, collecting candy, with built in tools to interact with the game world's AI systems.

If you want to hear more about game development, sub to my channel and give this a like! I will be producing more content every month I have a lot of midterms coming up to study for my undergrad.

Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction
0:18 - Coming up with ideas!
1:48 - Setting up tools (Unity & VsCode)
3:03 - Building Trick-or-Treater AI
5:08 - Fear or Aggro?
7:05 - Worldbuilding, drawing a little Halloween town
10:40 - Interacting with Enemies by Scaring them Yellow
12:05 - Concept Art for Halloween costumes
13:00 - UI/Enemy Pixel Speedart
14:00 - Optimization Crisis - 8 FPS!
16:20 - Populating the town map, foliage
17:40 - Polishing with Shaders, Lines and Randomness
19:30 - Sound Design, Guitar tunes
21:00 - Final polish run, Simulation Mode

Resources
My Pathfinding tutorial: https://youtu.be/D71mQCM9f98
Old Gods of Appalachia (A cosmic horror podcast): https://oldgodsofappalachia.com/
Carrion (Another, much more polished Reverse Horror game): https://store.steampowered.com/app/953490/CARRION/

Tools (All are free!)
Unity 2019.4 with URP for 2D Rendering
-- Using Cinemachine, Pixel Perfect Camera, TextMeshPro plugins
Notion for note-taking and project management
Inkscape for Vector Graphics
Krita for Handpainted Graphics
Aseprite for Pixel Art and Animation
Visual Studio Code with Omnisharp and many plugins for programming
Blender for VFX and putting this video together
BoscaCoeil for initial sound design
Tracktion Wavefomr 11 as digital audio workstation
Font: VCR OSD MONO, sourced from DaFont
Guitar: Not free, Yamaha C40

#gamejam #gamedev #devlog

Видео Game Jam Devlog! - Making a Reverse Horror Survival Game from scratch in 10 days канала Wintermute Digital