GAME JAM GAMES
Snow Time To Die
THE GAME
“Tis' the night before Christmas and the elves at Santa's workshop are demanding a pay rise. Santa puts Frosty on the job to fix the problem.
As the last Elf standing, you must fight for the Elf pay rise against the endless hoards of Santa's snowmen.”
ENGINE
Developed in Unreal Engine 4, several friends and I developed Snow Time To Die over a couple of days during a game jam with the theme ‘festive’.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Initially it was going to be a sort of simulator type of game where you were an elf working in Santa’s shop, we even considered making it in VR, but at some point we shifted away from that, and then I noted that the elves were probably slaves to the dreaded Lord Clause and it degenerated from there.
Before long we were trying to build ourselves a Santa themed stealth survival in which you were trying to escape Santa’s worshop, but alas we ran out of time. As such it became a first person shooter, as that was the easiest thing to do.
ROLES
Level Design - I Built the central part of the level, the workshop, and really tried to get a sort of claustrophobic feel to the workshop, which I was able to achieve with some choke points.
Writer - Writing lines to really drive home the Santa being evil narrative was important. I believe I achieved this with my subversion of ye olde ‘Night Before Christmas’ poem, and then a few of Santa’s more ominous lines that together with the gameplay managed to make a funny enjoyable little game.
Crabtastrophe
THE GAME
“Crabtastrophe” is a first person, action game, where the player repairs plumbing and fights off crabs while they try to flood the room. With semi-realistic graphics, fun plumbing tools, anti-crustacean weapons, reactive AI, hilarious physics and crabs! Having fun is a must.
Crabtastrophe was developed during the 2020 global game jam with the theme ‘repair’.
ENGINE
The game was developed using Unreal Engine 4, and was the first foray into Unreal Engine for many of the developers on the game.
BEHIND THE SCENES
I do not recall how it happened, but pipes came up in conversation, and we decided maybe we could make some sort of plumbing game to fit the ‘repair’ theme. As the player you would have to fix the leaky pipes sort of thing. That seemed boring to me, and my brain decided the most amusing thing would be to make the house a beach house, and then add some flooding, and then…well if we’re on the beach maybe there’s something weird in the pipes. Thus we thought crabs would be fun, and together we made this Crabtastrophic game.
ROLES
Level design - The entire game took place in the basement of a house, and it turned out designing everything to fit in a single room was difficult. It came out okay, but the best part was definitely our artist’s various crabs he made, some of which I believe had flame thrower arms and such.