Click on cat: make it big

Click button: buy cat

(idk I haven't played it either)

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First year to team up to do an online jam, so we can share the failure

To match the theme, we interpreted it in 2 major ways:

1.Object that can be big or small
2.Solution that may or may not work when problem became bigger or multiplied

...Also "Climb up a mountain" as potential candidate but gave up quickly

Anyway, the initial idea is tower defence, where a center unit draws enemy with different scales, and player place turrets with different scale to defend it

Bigger turret has better sight but fire slower, smaller enemy has little hp but move fast, and with that we...I meant HE made a demo, I then try to re-construct it with reusable component (A.K.A. Scalable solution)

Almost 24 hours had past, I just barely squished out a functional turret, we then discuss: Should we keep going, or pivot to something else?

We thought about it alone individually for an hour and a half then got back on Discord, I figured the greatest strength in the current is the fact that the scale can be changed in real time, so only use them on pre-determined unit would simultaneously be a waste and harder to code,

Therefore I proposed the scaling only happen in runtime, from there we discussed if scaling happens with direct player input or in-game event, what stuff do we apply the scale on, should the cost of be one time or overtime...

Then, we theory crafted out a game that perfectly fit the theme:

- There are rats, different sizes, reaching for the left side of the screen, game over when the defence line break.

- You place cats, scalable cat, which eats the rat and keep whatever on the left save.

- Cat needs energy to survive, they get energy from eating the rats; alternatively, if there is no rat in sight and the energy is critical low, they will eat small cat.

- Cat gets less energy when the rat is relatively small. However, when cat is full of energy, they just sleep and won't catch rat, create reason for player to scale the cat up and make room for their stomach.

- Rat ultimately gets bigger, force you to get bigger cat.

Now.
I can easily make a list of how brilliant the idea is. It's complex, it's self-balanced, it's intuitive to understand the mechanics; most of all, it fits the theme perfectly.

Scalable unit, gameplay is to find a scalable solution. Component system seemed pretty scalable, we even use SVG image, which was literally built to scale.

Did we underestimate the difficulty of building a complex system? Maybe, but we may never know.

BECAUSE WE THEN SPENT THE WHOLE DAY TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE CAT'S STATE MACHINE.

And no, even that was not finished. You can check the source code to see how many state was planned, ultimately 3 of them just barely functioned.

Although this jam has 96 hours deadline, we both decided it's not worth invest more time into this, and just take the 48 hours badge.

It's now 1 hour 30 mins away from 48 hours, and I'm journalling our failure while he's trying to figure out how to make a product that's somewhat functional as a game.

Maybe the real game jam was the friend we made along the way?

Goal for Next Year: Learn to plan tasks list with paper before open the computer

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