🎮 Oh Gnomes

Defend a garden centre as a gnome.



Summary

Role: Programmer & Team Organiser
Team Size: 4
Engie: Unity
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Jam Theme: Carpe Diem / Seize The Day
Jam Length: 7 Days

Downloads
Github: https://github.com/JonathanMCarter/GJL-Jam2020
Itch: https://carter-games.itch.io/oh-gnomes


One weary night at the local Homebase, one garden gnome comes to life to defend his light, his sun, a light bulb that a staff member left on overnight. You play as the gnome and must defeat the beasts of the night to save the day. Unlike most gnomes, this is a heavily armed vetran commando gnome, armed with his fishing rod, an umbrella and some fireworks you must defend the light bulb at all costs.


Approach & Post Motrem

So, this was a one week long jam. I took part with a group of strangers to try and get out of my confort zone a little this jam. I opened up a open invitation for anyone who liked what I had done to join and ended up with a solid team of 4.

We got into a call a few days before the jam to brainstorm idea’s. I came up with the idea of a gnome that was fast from watching Trollhunters for the second or third time and loved the gnome characters, mostly when they were used as a scoreboard for a contest by throwing them like a dart at a board xD. To put it mildy, that stuck and the overarching theme for the next hour of chat was gnomes.

For the development of the game, I was the only programming focused member of the team, with Alex doing some sections and then moving onto level design and some additional art. For the most part the games development went smoothly. I didn’t run into any major issues and managed to get everything done in time. I persoanlly felt I carried a fair bit of the work as I ended up doing the animations & sound implementation in the final days which was a little stressful. On top of that I made the itch.io page as well.

Overall I felt that the game was a decent release, though I knew there were a few problems with the animation and input. I was happy with my team and the overall standing of 21st place. Hoping to do even better next jam.