GMTKJam2019 Entry: No Right Turn

I've has a busy three years with uni, so I've not had much time for anything, really. I have a short  break (three whole months!) from uni and I thought I'd use that to practice some programming, and what better way than with game development?

I started to learn Unity in late June, and I've been following YouTube tutorials and tinkering with things, but nothing solid was coming from that, it was all learning and acclimatising. So I decided to enter some game jams to get a small portfolio of little games together to show what I'm capable of! The first jam I entered was GamesPlusJam2 (see my first game, A Space in Time), which gave me a week to make a game. Being a parent and a househusband didn't give me the full week, but I got a decent bit of time in which to make the game. It came out pretty well in the end.

So that brings me to my second jam, the Game Maker's Toolkit (GMTK) Jam 2019. This jam gave entrants 48 hours in which to create a game with the theme 'Only One'. I spend the Friday night pondering on this theme, thinking of ways to incorporate it. I eventually decided on a puzzle game in which you control a car that can turn in 'only one' direction. I figured, done right, this would be a pretty neat little puzzle game. Unfortunately Saturday was a write-off, since I had to go to town that day, so I got nothing done at all. I considered not even attempting. On Sunday afternoon I changed my mind. I needed to see what I could get done with such a short time frame. I work well under pressure, and I always enjoy challenges. So I gave it a go.

I remembered that Kenney (http://kenney.nl) had a 2D racing art assets pack, so I downloaded that and got to work. I decided to first create the tutorial levels. This would at least show off what I was going for, even if I didn't finish it. So I designed small track puzzles that can be solved by only turning left at the appropriate corners. The core mechanic took some tinkering. I didn't really want the car to be able to turn at any point, only at corners and junctions, so I had to make it so that the player can only turn the car at certain times. So I created some triggers, that allowed the player to press the left arrow key (or A key) only in a small space before the corner. This created further problems. Sometimes the triggers were too close to each other, causing them to either not work at all, or to have strange side effects. I eventually lined everything up so that all corners *should* work. 

I also originally had several box colliders around the grass, to detect when the car went off road, but quickly realised the best way was to just do a tilemap collider around the road tiles, that way if I edited a road, there would be no need to move or resize any colliders, it was all automatic.

After finishing the tutorial, I made the main menu. This was just an image, two text boxes with the credits, two buttons, and a little circular track that a car moved around (pssst - press R on the menu). After that I realised I had about an hour left to do the main game. This is when I realised that this is going to be a short game. A very short game. Designing these track puzzles takes time. Especially if they are to be any good. I didn't have time. So I rush through this part, doing the best that I could before time was up. The triggers for the corners on the main game are a little off in places due to rushing this part, so the car doesn't stay perfectly on the road. In the end I made five small levels and didn't even have time to do a 'Congratulations' screen! So I will say it here - if you completed this game, congratulations!

At about 7:50pm, I built the game and uploaded it here. Oh but what's this? Itch.io is facing server issues? GMTKJam has broken the site? Great! Thankfully, the great staff at itch.io worked tirelessly to fix the issue and the jam was extended to accommodate the issues. And not too long after 8pm, the game was uploaded and submitted to the jam.

Given more time, I think this could have been a great little puzzle game. I may have to work on it in future. I could see this being quite a fun and challenging mobile game. Who knows?

All-in-all, this was quite a challenge but I'm overall pleased with the outcome!

Thanks for reading!

- Philly