Behind the Design: LAUNCH
I know a lot of the content on this blog so far has been heavily skewed toward D&D, but that's far from the only game I play, or even work on. This past weekend I participated in a "game jam," in which designers are given a fairly specific prompt and must design and publish a game within specified parameters before a very short deadline. Given that this was the first game jam I've ever participated in, I think laying out my process and experience might make for an interesting blog post. (And if not, let me know in the comments, and I can avoid doing this type of post in the future.)
So, as I said, this was my first jam. Certainly not my first game design, but my I've never done a "jam" before. The jam in question was called the Emotional Mecha Jam, which I learned about when Dungeon Commander tweeted about having created a game called plot ARMOR. I took a quick look and saw that the basic idea of #SadMechJam was to create a game in the "mecha" genre but with a twist: the game has to center feelings, not combat. I was definitely intrigued.
Complication: I discovered said tweet on my phone while I was out of town visiting extended family due to a recent emergency (that's a story for places other than this blog). The deadline was the day after I'd be getting home, so I was going to have very little time to work.
"But that's the fun of the game jam, right?" Hell if I know; this is my first time, remember?
In any case, that's what I had to work with. On the long drive home I pondered the possibilities and the constraints. First and foremost, it has to center emotions. How do you make a game about feelings? It's certainly not unheard of for feelings to happen in an RPG, but usually the game isn't about feelings; rather, the feelings arise out of the attachment that's grown slowly over time as a natural result of prolonged proximity to the key characters and getting invested in them. Will I be able to produce that in a hastily-produced game? If so, how?
My thoughts drifted aimlessly, but eventually one image stuck in my mind: the Yoshi Jump. In Super Mario World, riding around on Yoshi is a little like having a battle mech. And if you're familiar with that game, you've probably at some point failed to make an extreme jump, and then made a cold decision: dismount Yoshi in midair, launching yourself to safety while Yoshi plummets to his doom. Given that mechs are often deeply-valued (sometimes even sentient) battle partners to their pilots, a game focused on the dire need for a "Yoshi Jump" and the decision of whether to do it sounded like a real possibility.
Okay, so assuming that the climax of the game is the jump decision, how do I make that emotionally impactful? I need the player(s) to be emotionally invested in the pilot and the mech. Thus, gameplay probably needs to center heavily on establishing that investment and connection. This, I decided, probably meant having the player write out scenes of the pilot's and mech's backstory. This has the added benefit of fitting the anime trope of using flashbacks for emotional impact. Sounds good!
So now I have a basic concept: prompt the player(s) to create a backstory and get invested, then punch them in the gut with a decision about whether to launch them toward safety in an escape pod while the mech stays behind and gets destroyed. Bonus: What if it's a single-player game and the player doesn't discover until the end that they're playing the role of the doomed mech?
Complication: I have this concept, but I'm still in the car and haven't actually had a chance to look at the full description or parameters of the jam. So a few hours later, after an exhausting drive and getting settled at home, I finally read up on the jam properly. First, I confirmed that I still had a day left to finish. Second, I learned that the game has to be "short," meaning 1–4 pages total. Yikes. I figured it would have to be short since the jam only lasted a weekend, but that's really short.
Thus comes the least-glamorous part of game design: the crapheap. Between the day I got home and the day of the deadline, I spent a few hours jamming out beginnings of documents, deciding "no, that's not what I want," scrapping it, and starting again. Pro Tip: You never make anything good without at some point making something bad and going "ew, no" and cutting it out of the project. This process was maybe 3-4 hours.
Should it be one or two players? I have a half-written two-player version, but settled on one-player.
Should it include mechanics other than just writing prompts? I eventually decided that it should.
Should I keep the idea of a surprise reveal that the player is the mech? I went with yes on that one.
I also went through a few different half-formed implementations of how the writing prompts could be presented. I eventually tied the level of damage on your mech to a series of die rolls, and made the number of writing prompts scale with the amount of damage sustained. After all, a more dire situation prompts more feelings and flashbacks.
I ended up with a good beginning (a couple of scripted scenes and non-variable writing prompts to set the stage) and a good middle (a series of rolls to see how many systems fail and how many memories you'll write), but I needed an ending. Ideally, the climax should in some way — some mechanical way, so that it feels like it matters — take into account all those bonding memories you wrote, as well as meaningfully capitalize on your role as the doomed mech.
The eventual answer? Abandon the idea that you're deciding whether to make the "Yoshi Jump." Instead, it's a given that the only way to save the pilot is to eject them, but the tension — the emotional gut-punch — lies in the fact that you have limited time to say goodbye and communicate your feelings to the pilot before your power core explodes and kills you both. You have to make hard choices about your desire to share your feelings versus the risks of taking too long before ejecting the pilot.
At last, I had a game.
I got it written up, and had some time (thankfully) to search out appropriate fonts and try to come up with a cover image. Not wanting to pirate any art and unable to find something appropriate in the Creative Commons in a reasonable amount of time, I decided to go with a minimalist, high-contrast text-on-color title page that has the bonus effect of feeling kind of severe, which is appropriate. I named the game LAUNCH after the pivotal decision point, and published the game with a couple of hours to spare.
You can find LAUNCH on itch HERE or on DriveThruRPG HERE.
You can see other #SadMechJam games on itch HERE.
So, that's what it was like writing my first "jam" game. Let me know whether you like this type of content, so I know whether or not to write more posts like this in the future. Also, I'd love it if you left a review of LAUNCH (especially on DriveThruRPG, where my "average publisher rating" is struggling).
That's all for today. The next post will hopefully be the next installment of Welcome to Newbieville, so fingers crossed! Until then, take care of each other, okay?
So, as I said, this was my first jam. Certainly not my first game design, but my I've never done a "jam" before. The jam in question was called the Emotional Mecha Jam, which I learned about when Dungeon Commander tweeted about having created a game called plot ARMOR. I took a quick look and saw that the basic idea of #SadMechJam was to create a game in the "mecha" genre but with a twist: the game has to center feelings, not combat. I was definitely intrigued.
Complication: I discovered said tweet on my phone while I was out of town visiting extended family due to a recent emergency (that's a story for places other than this blog). The deadline was the day after I'd be getting home, so I was going to have very little time to work.
"But that's the fun of the game jam, right?" Hell if I know; this is my first time, remember?
In any case, that's what I had to work with. On the long drive home I pondered the possibilities and the constraints. First and foremost, it has to center emotions. How do you make a game about feelings? It's certainly not unheard of for feelings to happen in an RPG, but usually the game isn't about feelings; rather, the feelings arise out of the attachment that's grown slowly over time as a natural result of prolonged proximity to the key characters and getting invested in them. Will I be able to produce that in a hastily-produced game? If so, how?
My thoughts drifted aimlessly, but eventually one image stuck in my mind: the Yoshi Jump. In Super Mario World, riding around on Yoshi is a little like having a battle mech. And if you're familiar with that game, you've probably at some point failed to make an extreme jump, and then made a cold decision: dismount Yoshi in midair, launching yourself to safety while Yoshi plummets to his doom. Given that mechs are often deeply-valued (sometimes even sentient) battle partners to their pilots, a game focused on the dire need for a "Yoshi Jump" and the decision of whether to do it sounded like a real possibility.
Okay, so assuming that the climax of the game is the jump decision, how do I make that emotionally impactful? I need the player(s) to be emotionally invested in the pilot and the mech. Thus, gameplay probably needs to center heavily on establishing that investment and connection. This, I decided, probably meant having the player write out scenes of the pilot's and mech's backstory. This has the added benefit of fitting the anime trope of using flashbacks for emotional impact. Sounds good!
So now I have a basic concept: prompt the player(s) to create a backstory and get invested, then punch them in the gut with a decision about whether to launch them toward safety in an escape pod while the mech stays behind and gets destroyed. Bonus: What if it's a single-player game and the player doesn't discover until the end that they're playing the role of the doomed mech?
Complication: I have this concept, but I'm still in the car and haven't actually had a chance to look at the full description or parameters of the jam. So a few hours later, after an exhausting drive and getting settled at home, I finally read up on the jam properly. First, I confirmed that I still had a day left to finish. Second, I learned that the game has to be "short," meaning 1–4 pages total. Yikes. I figured it would have to be short since the jam only lasted a weekend, but that's really short.
Thus comes the least-glamorous part of game design: the crapheap. Between the day I got home and the day of the deadline, I spent a few hours jamming out beginnings of documents, deciding "no, that's not what I want," scrapping it, and starting again. Pro Tip: You never make anything good without at some point making something bad and going "ew, no" and cutting it out of the project. This process was maybe 3-4 hours.
Should it be one or two players? I have a half-written two-player version, but settled on one-player.
Should it include mechanics other than just writing prompts? I eventually decided that it should.
Should I keep the idea of a surprise reveal that the player is the mech? I went with yes on that one.
I also went through a few different half-formed implementations of how the writing prompts could be presented. I eventually tied the level of damage on your mech to a series of die rolls, and made the number of writing prompts scale with the amount of damage sustained. After all, a more dire situation prompts more feelings and flashbacks.
I ended up with a good beginning (a couple of scripted scenes and non-variable writing prompts to set the stage) and a good middle (a series of rolls to see how many systems fail and how many memories you'll write), but I needed an ending. Ideally, the climax should in some way — some mechanical way, so that it feels like it matters — take into account all those bonding memories you wrote, as well as meaningfully capitalize on your role as the doomed mech.
The eventual answer? Abandon the idea that you're deciding whether to make the "Yoshi Jump." Instead, it's a given that the only way to save the pilot is to eject them, but the tension — the emotional gut-punch — lies in the fact that you have limited time to say goodbye and communicate your feelings to the pilot before your power core explodes and kills you both. You have to make hard choices about your desire to share your feelings versus the risks of taking too long before ejecting the pilot.
At last, I had a game.
I got it written up, and had some time (thankfully) to search out appropriate fonts and try to come up with a cover image. Not wanting to pirate any art and unable to find something appropriate in the Creative Commons in a reasonable amount of time, I decided to go with a minimalist, high-contrast text-on-color title page that has the bonus effect of feeling kind of severe, which is appropriate. I named the game LAUNCH after the pivotal decision point, and published the game with a couple of hours to spare.
You can find LAUNCH on itch HERE or on DriveThruRPG HERE.
You can see other #SadMechJam games on itch HERE.
So, that's what it was like writing my first "jam" game. Let me know whether you like this type of content, so I know whether or not to write more posts like this in the future. Also, I'd love it if you left a review of LAUNCH (especially on DriveThruRPG, where my "average publisher rating" is struggling).
That's all for today. The next post will hopefully be the next installment of Welcome to Newbieville, so fingers crossed! Until then, take care of each other, okay?
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