Final day of the jam! Last update. And of course the game!
Fairies Vs. Scaries on FuckThisJam BMO
Here’s a semi-final screenshot. The game may be updated in a little bit to get a final sound file in and make some sound volume tweaks, but I’ve hit my deadline at the moment…
I scooted some UI elements around a little (still not happy with it really) but this is mostly what it looks like done! This is the ‘winter’ board. There are five boards in all.
I don’t think that I was too successful in innovation during the jam, but here’s what I tried:
- Fairies get tired as you play. So you have to keep recharging them (with a drop of water from the pond). They’re pretty ineffective when tired, so you have to actively monitor your squad and can’t stop paying attention.
- You don’t get Mana (money) from killing critters. Instead, you get it per wave, when the new baddies spawn. The amount is the same for each wave on a board, so you can plan ahead a little. The penalty for missing a baddie is you missed a baddie (and it hits the castle). There is no additional “and you have less money to build” problem.
- When you recharge a tired fairy, you get a little extra mana. This adds a “comeback” mechanic since you only get the extra mana if you were already falling behind a little.
I think the comeback mechanic and the maintenance mechanic are pretty good ideas that could use some further expansion and testing.
What I learned is that GameMaker is a really easy tool for quick game prototyping and I’m likely to use it again for this purpose in the future. (It’s not my first time using it, but is my first time making the game more or less on my own.) I also learned that, even if it’s really easy to knock out tower defense mechanics in just a couple hours, balancing a tower defense is the hardest part of creating it. The game isn’t entirely balanced yet with some boards much easier than others! If I was going to continue to work on it, I’d do a lot more balance testing, and also put more effort into late-game monster sprites (they don’t really have animations). I also have a pretty annoying bug where monsters spawn on top of each other. This is most noticeable and ridiculous in the final board where monsters spawn in great numbers. I wish I had time to get to the bottom of this and fix it, but it’s not game-breaking, just sort of funny.
My favorite part of the game is that it has a character called “The Napalm Fairy.” I am fairly sure that this was the first time a human ever uttered the sentence, “The Napalm Fairy is still too powerful.”
It seems like Fuck This Jam was really successful in creating some interesting games. The best ones seem to be games that, aren’t just an attempt at a game type, but also parody that game in some way. So far I’ve checked out Furiosity and Love Interest and really enjoyed both! I also like the look of Pimps Vs. Vampires and I’ll be saving that one for later.
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