Monday 11 November 2013

I'm Not Playing


I'm Not Playing was my first 'jam' game. It won the Fight Magic Run battle, themed 'Independence'. FiMaRu had a very small pool of participants, so the achievement didn't go to my head. More valuable to me was the positive reinforcement that - yes! - I can make a game in 48 hours, as opposed to planning to develop a game in a short time and actually have it spiral into months and months.

I'm Not Playing is about a platform prototype sprite, called sprite_6, who becomes self-aware and ultimately rebels against her developer.

For a while I'd had an idea for a game lying dormant in the back of my head. Part of the game's challenge would be that the player would have to stuggle with and figure out the game's controls, like some kind of puzzle, as opposed to the controls being obedient and reactive to the player's every wish, like in other games. It's not a unique idea; many of us have played a game where our character's controls are temporarily reversed, for example, and left becomes right and right left. But I wanted to try to make a game based entirely around this concept, and explore its limits.

'Independence' gave me the chance to do just that, and even inspired a simple plot to give some structure and purpose to the mechanics.

The jam format can be exhausting, but it offers invaluable experience, and I'm pleased with the results I got. I've marked the next Ludum Dare in my calendar.

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