.. just can't figure out how to publish it.

My game is inspired by those plastic, water filled toys you find at restaurants. So aggravating, and yet intriguing...

I finished my first game ever! Before that all I had built was Unity prototypes.

https://jorjordandan.itch.io/bubbletoy

What went right

SOUND - I was really happy to be able to build a full game, with a soundtrack, lots of sound effects (which are all just me recording into a mic and then pitch shifting it), with all the menus like a pause screen, win conditions, six levels, even an end game screen! Music took four attempts, but my final attempt - via sequencing at beepbox, left me with a pretty cool little 8-bit soundtrack.

I'm fairly proud of how bubbletoy sounds. I also think it's fun, but since it's intentionally unintuitive, I don't know if anyone will spend the time learning the slight differences in the way the different glorps handle.

I feel like I did the exact opposite of most people on Ludum Jam - I spent an hour coding the mechanics, no time at all on graphics (except UI) and then basically just tried to polish the heck out of it. I also like the concept.

What went wrong

I think the game is not really visually interesting enough or engaging enough. The little character things I made (I called them glorps for some reason) were just a combination of unity primitives, and I think that will be a big turn off. Also, I think "unintuitive control" is somewhat of a cop out for a game. It's an attempt to do an end run around the expectations for a video game. Maybe everyone should build one once, and then never again. I'm not sure if the game just seemed fun to me because I built it, or if it's actually fun. I had fun playing it with my wife.

End of the day

At the end of the day, I was really happy to just build something and put it out there. I don't know if anyone has played it, or if anyone will, but I'm really happy to have built something complete, and fired it off into the unknown.

For some reason I decided to start by modeling and rigging a character, possibly because that was an area I wasn't too sure about. It went okay eventually:

but on my first try I forgot how weight painting worked, and acidentally connected the shoulders to the toe rotation:

😂😬😂

today I'm going to completely leave that and try to work on my actual game mechanics, which is where I should have started yesterday. I'm thinking of calling my game "Running out of power".... which sounds unimaginative, but don't worry, there's a dumb twist!

I'm done! My game is "YOU MUST RUN OUT OF POWER".

The premise is that you are trapped inside the word "power" and you must run out of it....

ANYWAYS.

Things that went well:

• I got finished, although I was starting to wonder
• it's a lot more complex than my last entry bubbletoy from #38
• I modelled, rigged, and animated a character from scratch, which went pretty well!
• I learned a lot about Unity

Things that went badly: * it took a lot more time than my last game, and I dont think it came out as good * too much time for a silly joke * the jump sound doesn't play consistently on the webGL version

I had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and very happy to be done. I'm going to go to the park with my kids now :D

Good luck to those still wrapping up their compo entries!