Last weekend we participated in the Ludum Dare game jam. Ludum Dare is a sort of video game Iron Chef. A theme is announced on a Friday evening and you have 48 or 72 hours (depending on which event you do) to make a game.
The theme was Beneath the Surface. In 72 hours, we made "Rats Under My Skin." It's a game about a super-agile cat who helps a mystical ruin with its vermin infection.
This was our first time working together on a Unity project and certainly the largest 3D project either of us has ever done. 3D feels different during development; it's one of those things where incrementing by one has a multiplicative effect, making every rotation or graphical effect so much more complicated.
On the other hand, 3D is more instantly compelling. As soon as you can navigate a 3D space the game feels more full than its 2D equivalent. I have a few theories about why that is, but regardless it makes 3D a viable choice for a timed development jam, especially when using a rapidly-prototyping system like Unity.
We ran into an assortment of silly issues along the way such our cat bouncing like a ball every time it fell from high enough or an issue with PNG compression affecting transparent color values that a fellow dev helped us with. Melissa's been having some shoulder problems, so they got to try and relearn vector math while on prescription painkillers.
The final project came out quite nicely. It still has a bunch of little bugs, but I think it's fun and a pretty damn good accomplishment for 72 hours, especially since we slept a reasonable amount during the jam.
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