Wow. Our fifth dare and our best result by far. It all came together this time. A good theme, a good idea and good programming experience. However it wasn't all smooth sailing and there were a few times it nearly fell apart.

What went well

A bit of backstory. Me and @pegasys first dare together was LD48 back in 2019. After a 3 year gap we returned in April 2022 for LD50. We had two ideas we really loved for this jam. A stock market card game, which would eventually become Market Maker, and a lorry delivery game where you would have to place packages and then drive to avoid obstacles. I think you can see where we are going. We had this idea on the back burner in every dare since then. Slowly refining it each time till where now for LD53 it was our strongest idea. So when Delivery won we were excited and highly motivated to finally make this game. This is reflected in it being our most polished and complete game yet and, in my opinion at least, our most fun game to date.

(Our original sketch from Ludum Dare 50)

Another aspect that we are really proud of is the 3D. Every game we have made so far has been 2D. Mostly due to our lack of experience in 3D. This time we decided to take the plunge and create a game in 3D. While functionally it still behaves as a 2D game, all the packages are on the same axis. The added depth from an artistic standpoint really makes this part of the game pop.

What went poorly

Our biggest issue was a lack of planning on what the exact gameplay was going to be for the lorry section. We had a vague idea of placing packages and then items or mechanics to make this more challenging or easy. Near the end of day 2 we had the placing of packages in place in an empty van with one test item. It quickly became apparent that the item wasn't very satisfying and that this section of the game had little actual "gameplay". It caused us to have a bit of an identity crisis over what the game actually was and this combined with having spent a non insignificant amount of time making the item lead to a steep drop in morale and motivation. Thus we decided to end work for the day and start fresh on Monday. In the end we removed the item and added different box sizes and shelves to put the boxes on. While we still think this isn't as fun and in-depth as we would've liked we are mostly happy with how it turned out.

The next issue is one of consistency. We worked (mostly) separately on the two sections of the game, regularly communicating but implementing each section alone. As such the visuals of the two sections diverge and the art style isn't entirely consistent. We have several ideas on how to alleviate this but unfortunately there wasn't enough time to work on this during the jam itself.

One way I would personally like to improve this in future is by getting more practice with 3D art so that we can both work on each section rather than having to split between the two of us. This would not only reduce the chance of inconsistent design but also allow more parallelisation of workload and less of a potential bottleneck for art heavy games.

Lastly is audio. This has been an area that has consistently been a weak point for us in all our games. From being absent entirely in Untitled Robot Game, to being two sounds in Market Maker. Once again the audio is a weak point. While some sounds are very good, such as picking up and dropping boxes. There are several noticeable omissions that hurt the mood of the game, such as background music and engine sounds.

Post Jam Version

Given how much we enjoyed making this and the results we have gotten. We have decided to continue working on this post dare. Our plans currently, after refactoring the current code, is to greatly expand the gameplay in the lorry as well as improve the art style and consistency and add more levels and content. We also plan on making a mobile port of the game, the drag and drop gameplay seems like a natural fit for touch screen displays.

Closing remarks

We are really proud of how Packing Heat turned out and are excited for where this game goes in the future. We'd like to thank everyone who rated our game and left valuable feedback as well as all our fellow jammers who make each of theses dares super fun and lastly Mike for creating this Game Jam and running it multiple times a year.

We'd love if you tried out our game Packing Heat. See you all in LD54!