After we participated in the GMTK game jam this year (where we made a lot of miscalculations), we were amped up and wanted to prove that we could do better. Also, we wanted to have a game jam with our 3D artist, and the Brackeys Game Jam was just around the corner.

When we saw the theme we were stumped, yet somewhere along the line sound was mentioned, and Echronomatica was born. 

We started with the idea of playing sounds to do things and then rewinding them. For example, if you wanted to shoot, you would play the sound, the shot would erupt, and you would have to rewind the sound effect. Or let’s say, you have to play a click when unlocking a door. However, those are just a glorified cooldowns and/or reloads, or plain un-fun things to do. 

We liked the idea though, so our thought process went something like the following: You would need one base attack that doesn’t have a cooldown, and then maybe have abilities which would work in the way described above. We thought of one main track playing which would serve as your base attack, and which you could rewind to get to certain parts. Why should you rewind? Well, certain parts are stronger against certain enemies. If you are at the wrong place, you would do very little damage, and if you are in the right one, you mow down your enemies. 

Awesome! We have the idea, and it sounds great. Now we only need to realize it. Having been burnt by time flashing by the last time we participated in a jam, we were especially focused on planning. We decided to spend 2 days on the core gameplay: shooting enemies and rewinding the track, focusing the rest of the effort on polishing and marketing it as much as possible.

On Monday evening we already had the core: running around, shooting, and rewinding. We had an awesome player character!

We even had four enemy types (not the models, just the behavior), which is insane. Look at them!

Once that was done, we moved onto polishing. Making everything look good and feel nice. Whether we succeeded you can decide for yourself. Here are some of the things I am particularly proud of:

The bounce-box enemy has an eye animation. 

This particle effect which looks like a soundwave. Sadly, I achieved it very late in the process.

There are some things, of course, we couldn’t add in time, but which we wanted to. In the end, though, I am very proud of us. We did a great job and had fun along the way. What more could one ask for?

Well, people are asking for some fixes. The main thing is that the game freezes when you die, and there is no restart button. Simon added one, it just simply, sadly didn’t work. However, it has become clear just how important it is, and that this will be a priority next time, i.e. add a simple “you died” screen. And I can understand how jarring it is for people who are rating your game. It is very frustrating to have to reload the page just to keep on playing. And, as we all know, any friction while doing something increases the chance that you will stop. That is the last thing we as gamedevs want or need: you to stop playing our game. So, next time, we will package it nicely, beginning and end, and making it easier for the player to never stop playing!

I would say we succeeded for the largest part. It wasn’t perfect, but much better than anything we have achieved before, and that is what counts. We made our best game to date. 

I think the two things that improved our process this time were not adding new features along the way and deciding on a style early. We knew pretty clearly what we wanted to make and what we wanted it to look like. 

Ivan
Bromberry Games