Pool frog post-mortem

Pool frog is a game made for the LUDUM DARE 54 game jam, theme being "Limited Space". I ended up making a fast and simple arcade where the goal is simply getting the highest score, beating your best by mastering jumping. Which is usually my goal at game jams: small games that can be easy to pick up and play, trying to polish them to death.

I enjoy entering game jams with Pico8, a fantasy console with harsh limitations: 128x128 pixels, 16 colors, 4 sound channels and even a limit in the amount of tokens - code, that is. So I guess that just using Pico8 to make this game satisfied the game jam theme! Still, I made a one-screen arcade where space is limited by gameplay space (you can't leave the pond) and game mechanics - you can run out of safe spots to stand on.

TIME MANAGEMENT IN A GAME JAM

I usually distribute time in the same way during 48h game jams:

• Wait for the theme to be revealed, which may happen during Friday afternoon or Saturday midnight. If I'm awake, great. I used to wake up to find out, but these days I prefer to sleep a bit more. 
• On Saturday, wake up at 8am. Brainstorm ideas until 9am. Have breakfast. Consider implications for the most promising. By 10am I must have chosen one.
• Before lunch (say 2pm), core gameplay must be working.
• Start again at 4pm. Before dinner, most of the game should be completed. 
• Go to bed and have some sleep. This time I stopped at 8pm and even watched a move with my family.
• Wake up at 8am on Sunday. Add content (usually FX and music), menu, gameover, polish.
• Before lunch the game should be finished.
• After lunch, prepare itchio page and publish. There should be no coding at this point.

So... mental and physical health FIRST. I'm here to have fun, not to torture myself.

BRAINSTORMING

Brainstorming for me is usually a mix of methods. Look for synonyms, browse related images (google and pinterest, mainly), draw mindmaps, have a look at my ideas notebook... I may also chat a bit with ChatGPT. It may surprise you!

This time, and because of a recent conversation in Mastodon, I wanted to do something related to pool mechanics - which fit the theme! What I'm not quite sure is how I came up with a frog being the one launching billiard-ball/lily pads around...

• Player is a frog on a pond standing on lily pads.
  
• Jump would be something like golf games, or Worms: choose angle and jump power.
• When jumping, you launch the lily pad you are standing on in the opposite direction.
• Originally, there was a hole where you had to put waterlilies in. I even coded it, but it was not fun.
• Bumping lily pads with each other increases score.
• Falling into the water attracts koi, more the longer you stay in water. You have to swim back to safety.
• If koi are too close, they will end up eating you.

Those were the basics, but at some point I added waterlilies degrading the longer you stay on them, which ends up destroying them. Rembember the theme? Yep, so there's limited space.

Then I usually draw a mockup of characters of how the game may look.

Went with the right one, made me laugh :D

DEVELOPMENT

Most of the time was spent on pool physics (which is basically a projection of ball velocities on the tangent vector of the two balls involved in the collision), tweaking how jumps felt (gravity is increased when falling) and... procedural koi. There was no need at all for that, but I spent a few hours making those koi with five circles. I'm quite proud of them :D

Much better in movement, though.

And then of course polishing, polishing, polishing. Because my game jam games are really small, I start polishing from the very beginning. Things like: 

• The star you get when you nail a jump
• Water ripples (which are just circles drawn with a certain fill pattern)
• Particles
• Visual cues (like waterlilies blinking when colliding)
• Animations! There's limited sprite space, and 16x16 sprites eat a lot of space in Pico8.

Still, I'm missing a few things like score points floating up.

SO WHAT WENT GOOD?

Well, I was able to do all that within time limits. Yay! The game is more or less exactly what I came up with, and then some - like the fly and eating it, which was added on Sunday. If gives you a reason to jump around. And 25 points.

COME OVER HERE

WHAT WENT BAD?

Difficulty is the same during gameplay! So once you figure out jump timing and distances, it's difficult to lose. You may end up quitting. I mean, that's better than a game over because the frog got eaten, right? At least for the frog. But not for a game?

FUTURE WORK

I'm planning a post-jam version where difficulty ramps up by making koi swim faster. Will probably make waterlilies degrade faster too.

Will add floating poings, so it's easier to undestand how to score (it's explained in the main menu... but yeah, better to always tell the player what is happening)

An finally... code is prepared for two players! I didn't add a second one during the game jam but most functions expect a player. It shouldn't be difficult creating a two-player version. Not sure if it makes sense, though, but I had it in mind from the very beginning. We'll see.

THAT'S IT!

All in all I had lots of fun making this one. I hope you enjoy playing it too! Would love to read your comments.  See you in the next jam!