IT my first jam and the theme of depth immediately reminded me of Cthulhu.

My idea: if you drop him enough treats, he won't kill you, and maybe he'll reward you, but if you keep him waiting, he'll get angry

And yesterday maded grab mechanics for food. But you can't take every meal, some of the tastiest ones will be too much for you until you level up.

Today i half-maded a cthulhu temple and i'll embellish it if I have time

Added more different types of food, some of that can be dangerous

If i pushed source code to git long ago and dont make any edits to it, but my project packaging so long, it causes problem if i upload archive of game later than the timer passes? Has anyone else been in this situation?

PLAY PLAY PLAY

All the time i've been fighting so you can play and not experience the cringe of goofy bugs

🏅 Here it is, my achievement list:

|Bugfix|Comment| |---|---| |Replaced the monster sound due to copyright issues| no comments | |Added more hints for players|yea, at the beginning I didn't expect that I would need to place so many hints)| |Baked the light differently due to visual bugs|That was a big problem bc i dont know what is baking and what affects on it, now im better at this, thanks for jam| |Pixelated post process was disabled, enabled it|| |Changed the balance to make the gameplay more enjoyable|Most likely, I will change more and more| |🧨Fixed bugs with dynamite, now it explodes correctly|💥💥(correclty)| |Deleted the developer's progress widget|Yea, i forgot to delete it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯| |Changed the stamina widget to 💅🏼beauty💅🏼 one|| |I deleted Unreal extra assettes so that the game would weigh less|This piece of garbage took up more than !600! megabytes in the raw project and 110 mb in packaged one| |Fixed developer settings for debugging|That i forgot too, sorry| |Increased the range of picking up items|Bc of my lazy ass is too tired of getting closer to objects than I want to| |Changed the offer widget because it did not wrap lines| And then upsized text size to easier reading|

This post was supposed to come out a day ago, but I only now have time to write it

Thanks for all of your feedback 💋

i will wait for more of it, also i want from you new ideas how to upgrade game after jam)

The next post will be about what I wanted to do and what happened in the end. See you soon

* I was trying to make a new cover for Lisiy *

And there variants, which is better?

Was:

Current:

Considered:

Last one maded with chatgpt

Play Lisiy

⚠️Lots of text⚠️

* Introduction:* This is my first jam, i programmed all in blueprints

Day before the jam:

• I was super nervous about what theme would be chosen, so I stocked up on energy drinks and Snickers to avoid wasting time on food.
• The jam in my country started at 4 a.m., so I decided to go to sleep. Because of the nerves, I had to do sleep exercises, but in the end, I managed to fall asleep properly.

For beginning: Decided to prioritize sleep for mental clarity during the jam. Subtracted sleep hours: 6+8+8 = 22. Total time: 72-22 = 50 hours for game development.

Jam:

• Woke up at 10 AM, 6 hours after the jam began. Theme: "Depths"

• Sat down to brainstorm ideas

On English

On Russian

• At first, I thought of making a puzzle game, something about opening the right doors and closing the wrong ones to descend deeper into a dungeon. Then I accidentally saw a YouTube thumbnail about Gravity Falls and immediately remembered the episode with the endless pit

• Came up with the idea of throwing objects into an abyss for rewards. Added mechanics: heavy objects require strength upgrades to lift.

Wrapped it into a concept: "A game about feeding Cthulhu various foods".

Finalized concept:

"A slave forced to feed Cthulhu for life, aiming to escape alive."

Development plan:

1. Implement basic physics-based object grabbing 🖐

2. Create a system for rapid item/upgrade creation with custom stats ⚙️

3. Make object size affect weight (controlled via DataTable).

4. Build a "Cthulhu satisfaction" system fueled by feeding

5. Design a shop to buy upgrades using satisfaction points.

6. Create diverse food types and upgrades 🍖🥩🥓🍳

Development process:

• I spent 6-8 hours deciding: Unreal has a built-in method for grabbing objects — the PhysicsHandle method, but I wanted items to be able to pull the character down if the player wasn't strong enough to lift them. From a previous project, I decided to rewrite the object grabbing tech, but I overlooked a few things:

• As I understood, this can’t be done with PhysicsHandle due to how it works; it’s only achievable through multiple physics constraint components

• But then another problem arises: I’d need to make the player’s CapsuleComponent physical, and I didn’t solve that in the last project. When the capsule is physical, standard movement via AddMovementInput doesn’t work; I’d have to physically “push” the player in the desired direction, and the player would have inertia, making it hard to stop.

• * Decision*: Sticked with PhysicsHandle for simplicity, though Constraint had more chaotic potential.

• No issues here at all, since I had already built a weapon system using a DataTable. The structure was roughly:

  1. Create a general DataTable with pre-planned items, assign their stats
  2. Create a parent class where, in the construction script, you assign variables from the DataTable to the object itself
  3. Create a child class, assign the row name from the DataTable, and place it in the world
  4. Done

Make a quick way to create upgrades:

• Hit a snag: object mass couldn’t be set in Construction Script.
• I spent 3–4 hours stuck on this, until I decided to set the mass in BeginPlay

This wasn’t hard either:

• 100 = victory

• 0 = death

• To reach 100, you need to feed him a special delicacy — I decided it would be dinosaur steak

• Every 0.5 seconds, a fixed amount of satisfaction is subtracted

• If satisfaction hits 15%, you can’t trade with Cthulhu and he screams, calling on the player to feed him faster

• Everything went wrong here, and I had to abandon most of the new features
• The idea was: player walks to the edge, presses a button or says a spell; if satisfaction is high enough, a shop appears with three items. The player picks one, the shop disappears. When the player returns, the two unchosen items remain, and a new one replaces the chosen.

Problems: 1. Very little time left 2. I couldn’t figure out the logic to replace the chosen upgrade with a new one

3. I decided there would only be one upgrade to choose from, and they wouldn’t cost satisfaction anymore — they’d just be awarded for reaching certain score thresholds

• This happened throughout the whole jam. 3D models were constantly made in Blender.
• I exported about 40 models during the jam, didn’t count how many were left unfinished in Blender.
• I really wanted to add a SkeletalMesh cow into Lisiy. I even gave her a name — in English, just for simplicity, I call her telec. But when spawned, her jumps endlessly. I couldn’t fix it or even figure out the reason. If anyone knows what might be wrong, I’d appreciate any advice. Anyway, rest in peace, telec.

Final stretch:

• I had almost given up. It was midnight, the jam ends at 4 a.m., with one extra hour for uploading.
• At that point I was still finishing the shop and deciding on upgrades.
• I finished everything at 3 a.m., but the compiler let me down, and I ended up with a compiled build only around 5:40 a.m.
• Full of nerves due to unknown consequences of violation of deadlines, uploaded to itch.io

Aftermath:

• Qualified for nominations🎉🎉
• For my first jam, I consider this an absolute success. At one point I seriously thought about quitting entirely.

Thanks to everyone who played Lisiy! Check it out if you haven’t. Good luck to all developers!

Then try Lisiy 👇

Cthulhu is hungry...

Feed the cthulhu or he will...

Try Lisiy 👇