First of all, i want to thank everyone who played and rated Buzzy Business!
More than 20 people around the world have been biting other people's legs and toes and it makes me smile just to write this sentence.
I've received some heartwarming comments and i'm really grateful for that! I am very touched to see that some of you enjoyed playing it! This was the second time i joined Ludum Dare, and i'll be there on next editions without a doubt.
So… What is Buzzy Business?
It is a game with one bug: the main character.
In Buzzy Business, you are a mosquito whose goal is to harvest a certain amount of blood by biting people.
Easy? Not so much as you will have to dodge annoyed hands trying to smack you and hungry frogs.
Will you opt for a strategic approach or be a reckless mosquito?
Try it here! (play in browser)
My impressions on the jam
When the theme was announced… Well i was a bit disappointed.
I voted -1 for this because it felt too specific, even if the word "harvest" in itself can have multiple meanings. It is quite close to "collect" (and myself can't really tell the difference to be honest), and it tends to focus the harvesting on two main ideas: agriculture and the Grim Reaper. As many, my first thought process was: wheat>souls>???. The first night, i was devastated because i was unable to find any good idea besides that. (don't get me wrong: i've played amazing games where you harvest plants or souls, and i don't think a game jam is necessarily a place to revolutionise the world of video games)
I went to bed, let this infuse and when i woke up i decided to go for the mosquito idea i've had hours ago and left out. I think i left it out because originally, i wanted to make an abstract game and i excluded any figurative idea. I think i've made the right choice not to stick to my original idea, because i'm quite happy with the mosquito result.
On the first day, i programmed the main skeleton of the game. Since i have absolutely zero knowledge about code, i use GDevelop, a free app that works with boxes of "if something happens, do that" (kinda). I've done some projects on this app, but i still consider myself as a rookie, so i was honestly surprised and happy to see that i had a pretty decent pace (apart from a 2 hours nightmare where nothing worked as i intended and i was completely losing my concentration)!
The second day was mostly making art and trying to make my draft look nice and adding some gameplay features. The last day, i took care of the sounds (digging sound effects on free sample banks, editing them, making the music) and polishing as much as possible the look and feel of the game. Everything was ready literally 3 minutes before the deadline.
I ended really happy and proud of my game, and something strange happened: usually, when i finish any kind of project, once it's "delivered" i don't want to touch it anymore (i know that you can always add and improve things, and most of the time, i don't go back to a finished project because i know that it'd be a loop of "wait i can do more" and well… we gotta stop at some point haha). But after finishing this game, i really wanted to add some features i had in mind but got no time to implement during the jam.
That's why…
you see it coming
What's new in the post-jam version?
- Danger no longer only comes from up and down but also from the sides, with a new enemy to dodge: the bird!
- People are now equipped with mosquito repellent and can spray speed debuff zones, which are not deadly in themselves, but can lead to a disastrous ending if they land at the wrong moment.
- I tried to take account of some comments about the difficulty of the game. It has now 3 levels of difficulty: easy (3 lives + blood is harvested faster), medium (3 lives) & hard (1 life)
- A gamer in its natural habitat tends to become better at games. Now you can know if you are becoming better with the addition of high scores and statistics in game over screens.
- Some adjustments and bug corrections (don't worry, no mosquito was harmed during this process)
Play it here: Buzzy Business (post-jam version)
For obvious reasons, if you haven't played the
original game yet, please do it and rate it before trying the post-jam version.
Thank you for reading this post, i hope i made you want to try Buzzy Business (both jam and post-jam versions, but at least the jam one) and i am looking forward to get your feedbacks :heart:
