Watashitachi, Global Game Jam 2014

 

After a snowy weekend, the Global Game Jams in Pittsburgh was over. The intense and crazy 48 hours game design quest had all jammers put all their effort to make something interesting and fun. The topic of this year event is “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” A quite famous quote from Anaïs Nin. This topic is interesting and can lead much deeper thinking, though I took quite a while to understand the meaning of quote. It basically told us one important message: Everyone’s perception is different. And this message could lead to many interesting theme and game mechanics.

 

Our 4 people team, formed by Kuang-Hsin Liu, Chong Hu, Jack Koo and I, brainstormed a couple of ideas at the first night. We talked about the changing perspective and playing with shadows, characters with different or even conflict abilities, illusions that are made from its friendly appearance and changing identity. The shadow idea was so obvious that we all agreed to pick something else on the list and there was a changing identity idea. Our game designer, Jack Koo, came up with some mechanics that made this game not exactly changing identity. Following are some simple illustrations of the concept:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(1) Our main character, the ninja has a halo. The halo presents the area that the ninja could cast spell and make animals in the area become one of him. And the guest can control all of them to let the main character to get to the finishing line.

 

(2) The clone ninja has a halo too, and the main character’s halo will get bigger as more animals turn into clone ninjas.

 

(3) However, if the clone ninja who previously is an animal get out of the main character’s area, the clone ninja will change back to the original animal and run away.

 

(4)Main character can use clone ninja as stepping stone to get to higher place.

 

(5) Sacrifice the clone ninja to hit the bird and formed a new stepping stone.

 

However, while I was finalizing the map and testing the game. I found it hard to follow the original concepts and change the map in a way which is different from what our game designer had expected.

Followings are the maps I came up. And I met some level design problems, such as how to make levels have different enough and hard enough than previous level. Another big question is that shall I leave the puzzle open with kinds of solutions or it shall be only one solution and let the guests try to figure it out?

 

Tutorial:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Level 1:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Level 2:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Different solutions of level 2:

(1) Turn the bird to your clone ninja and drop him at the middle mountain. Let two of the clone ninjas jump to the next cliff and use them as stepping-stones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2) Use the main character to jump and hit the bird to let the new clone ninja fall on the other side of the cliff. Last, use the clone ninja as stepping stone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our game on Global Game Jam site:

http://globalgamejam.org/2014/games/watashitachi

 

There’s execution file on the site.