[SA Game jam 2018] Child services fight to save 1000 pound child.....

KleinM

Jam name: SA Game Jam 2018
Project name: Child services fight to save 1000 pound child at Dr Jerry Movich when enabler
mom goes berserk. You won’t believe what happens next!!!
Level of experience: Hobbyist
Members: @KleinM, @ruaangrobler, @DrJerryMovich
72hr entry

The description of the game is the project name :)

Download the Windows build attached to this post
OR
Play game in a browser

Some screens below:

KleinM

This is Ricky!

KleinM

Sprite sheet action!!

Nandrew

The title was so convincing I thought you were a bot spamming the forums. :P

I see the aesthetic you're going for, and a top-down perspective. Interested to see what kind of game this will be?

Desktoy

This should be the winner of best narrative IMHO

Good job on the sprite sheet by the way

KleinM

Done! I have updated the original post with the playable desktop build and a link to play in the browser. Enjoy! :)

donderbos

The title is quite a mouthful! :P
The narrative in the beginning is hilarious and I had fun trying to feed Ricky ALL the burgers and soda!
It would have been fun if you could perhaps throw child services with broccoli to stop them from getting to Ricky.

DrJerryMovich

Nandrew said:

The title was so convincing I thought you were a bot spamming the forums. :P

I see the aesthetic you're going for, and a top-down perspective. Interested to see what kind of game this will be?

Thank you so much for the feedback. :D would love to hear your thoughts on the final product.

DrJerryMovich

donderbos said:

The title is quite a mouthful! :P
The narrative in the beginning is hilarious and I had fun trying to feed Ricky ALL the burgers and soda!
It would have been fun if you could perhaps throw child services with broccoli to stop them from getting to Ricky.

<3 thank you so much!! yes that was one thought....ran out of time.

Desktoy

Played through it a bunch of times, first thing I tried was just shovelling as much broccoli into the munchkins mouth, just to make sure I could lose, and I did, so good on you for implementing that :)

Then for some reason the host allowed me onto his show again, so I decided to make it memorable. First came the burgers, which the little bubkin devoured whole without even chewing, such a sweet little angel he is. Next I awaited the crew to drop more from the ceiling but only broccoli came. Little jimbo doesn't like the bad greenies to I threw them away and screeched toward the sky, requesting sustenance. Thankfully the lard god answered and gifted me multiple delicacies after that, and slowly but surely, my adorable little baby boy grew another chin, and then another. Never have I been so proud in my life of him.
Shortly after my old and frail legs realised they could do less work if I carried multiple foodthings at the same time, so while my baby dumplin was seemingly getting smaller by devouring the orange shirted devilpeople, I began to gather my arsenal.


(Source: CCTV footage of crazed mother scouring television set for scraps of food)

Scrambled eggs lying in the muck and some opened cans of soda that someone tried to hide amongst the floorboards, to top it all off I even found a convenient loaf of cheese that only had the slightest bit of hair sticking out of it. Bobby will be so happy I thought to myself, as I ran back to my monolithic child.
In the final few steps Jimmy looked towards me, his eyes bloated and tears welling up, but I knew he wanted to eat more, he's always been such a skinny child and he needs more. "Always more" I tell him as i slide the greasy eggs down his throat.
As thanks for this act, tommy unleashes a glorious display of fireworks, melting half the crowd and any demonspawn who would try and take my baby away. All while I safely lay tucked away in the folds of his belly.


(Infant reaches heavyweight tier for the first time in history. circa 2018 - decolourized then recolourized)


In all realness, I quite liked it, you did a good job for 72hours, I encountered no bugs which is always a positive side. My only feedback would be maybe offering a faster spawn time for foods other than broccoli, and maybe counter that with a faster travel time of the child protection workers, or maybe the child shrinks faster. I think this would help suite the theme of escalating possibilities as you'd have to choose between what to feed him to give him what effect. I found that I was always going for like the one fattening food and everything else was broccoli.

In any case though, it's a minor concern, the game still works really well in its current state. I'm keen to see you guys in more game jams in the future!

Stygian65

The tone feels a lot like Binding of Isaac ... nice ;)

DrJerryMovich

[quote="Desktoy;52578"]Played through it a bunch of times, first thing I tried was just shovelling as much broccoli into the munchkins mouth, just to make sure I could lose, and I did, so good on you for implementing that :)

Hey Desktoy thank you so much for the detailed review.

So throughout our build, we developed what we will call the broccoli problem. Essentially broccoli was meant to fill up an ability meter. Lack of time determined we needed to simplify. We liked the mechanic that Broccoli make you shrink but never gotten round to balance the gameplay.

Wish list of things we still wanted to implement:
Scaling Faster food spawns.
Scaling Speed of the mother's movement
Scaling faster enemy spawns
More complex abilities. Eg you can aim the vomit
A wieght meter which will break the floor at a certain wieght triggering the next level which will have new foods and new enemies.

But we had lots of fun!!!
Will definitely be back next time :D

KleinM

@Desktoy. Hahaha! Your explanation is awesome! :)
One of my goals were to have something that is bug free even if I had to cut some things out. The initial idea was to make it a rouge like endless runner thing, that scales the speeds and things into infinity.

Thanks for playing and the feedback!

Desktoy

DrJerryMovich said:

Wish list of things we still wanted to implement:
Scaling Faster food spawns.
Scaling Speed of the mother's movement
Scaling faster enemy spawns
More complex abilities. Eg you can aim the vomit
A wieght meter which will break the floor at a certain wieght triggering the next level which will have new foods and new enemies.

It sounds like you were on the right track then, it's a shame that there was a lack of time, but such is the nature of game jams, you still did a really good job and it's good to see you had the right ideas for what you'd work on next. Good joob guys! :)

TerryPogger

This is so fun! Really love the combination of tone, music and art style. It feels great to play and rewarding that Ricky fattens up so fast.

Weeabro

The game was a lot of fun, and the addition of sound effects was a very nice touch, especially considering the limited time.

I found the game challenging in a good way. The sprites were really cute and I loved the music.

I'd also love to be able to have a way to shove child services away, as that would make the game a bit easier, or maybe not get rid of them, but just delay them

SpaceDassie

Loved the little intro story bit.
The moving is really responsive, bu it does sometimes get tricky to see everything when the excrement gets all over the screen. Interesting Idea and would love to see it develop further with more levels in the future.
Also, you were right about having more poop than my game XD

Trian

>The story telling really remind me of
>Tendies green text stories

EvanGreenwood

Love the clickbait inspired parody, and the dismal view of humanity presented by this game.

It was interesting having to solve new problems as the situation got more complicated (like using cheese to get rid of social workers). Would have loved to have further options (like ways of removing the broccoli scattered around the level).

I found it really difficult to win, as broccoli would spawn underneath the baby. But I got to 1000 pounds in the end!

The title of the game is sublime. I don't know what that says about me :/

KleinM

EvanGreenwood said:

Love the clickbait inspired parody, and the dismal view of humanity presented by this game.

Thanks for playing! :)

EvanGreenwood said:

It was interesting having to solve new problems as the situation got more complicated (like using cheese to get rid of social workers). Would have loved to have further options (like ways of removing the broccoli scattered around the level).

Good idea, we should have made it that some foods can clear the broccoli from the screen. Why didn't we think of that...

EvanGreenwood said:

I found it really difficult to win, as broccoli would spawn underneath the baby. But I got to 1000 pounds in the end!

The idea was that as soon as you can throw food, you should collect all the broccoli on the screen and throw it off screen. But yeah, the spawning is a bit buggy. There is a dead-zone for stuff not to spawn in, but it doesn't scale with Ricky. So eventually he becomes bigger than the dead-zone and things spawn on top of him.

EvanGreenwood said:

The title of the game is sublime. I don't know what that says about me :/

:)

EvanGreenwood

@KleinM Dammit, I should have thought about chucking away the broccoli! I did try throwing it at the child services but they didn't seem to notice/care.