This was a fun LD for me. I went in cold without a pre-disposition as to what genre game I wanted to make. I was a blank slate. In honesty this was due to bad preparation and planning, but it meant I had to pick an idea quickly and get to iterating.

Please play/rate my game and I’ll do the same.

How long can you last?

What went right…

• Streaming. I got the kinks worked out from last time’s attempt and this time it all went smoothly with voice/picture and everything from a technical standpoint.
• Settled on an idea quickly. Like a lot of people I took the top 3-5 themes and sort of wrote some test ideas for each. For Beneath the Surface I was going to do a game about drowning, or a game about being a gopher under a golf course, hiding from groundskeeper attacks, ala Caddy Shack.
• Super small scope. I wanted an idea that was simple. One-button, one mechanic, one idea. I was thinking about mobile games and zero training. A pick up and play and instantly understandable game.

What went wrong…

• I struggled with a major physics bug for several hours. I switched from 2D to 3D physics and back and forth a couple of times. I’d used physics for every game I’d ever made and knew it cold. Why weren’t gravity and impulses working properly? Turns out if you have an Animator component attached to your object, uncheck the “Apply Root Motion” box. I had no idea. None. It was my first time using the animation system. But as soon as I unchecked that box, everything worked flawlessly in terms of physics.
• The animation system bit me in the ass and cost me 3-4 hours – again. I still do not fully understand it, but someone in the channel mentioned “don’t have any parameters on your transitions” and it worked. I wasn’t even triggering the anims via the parameters, but once defined it appears Unity *requires* you to do so, vs triggering ala “animator.Play(“Swim”)”. The animation system in 4.3 seems to be a mess but perhaps I just need more experience with it.
• I had NO idea what I was making. It wasn’t a familiar genre with expected mechanics. I’d never made a game like this nor had one for reference. So I stumbled along until I found mechanics and things that seemed fun. But I went to bed Fri night thinking “yeah, this might work”.

In the end I think the game came out well. Most people score 40-60s. But you can break 100s and reach near 200s as the game has a narrow band of skill and timing you can exploit, so more skilled players can score higher, and there’s some tricks to learn. I’m pleased with that.

Please play/rate my game and I’ll do the same.