Oh Gnomes

Defend a garden center as a gnome.

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 veteran 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 ideas. 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 personally 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.