First things first, the game is available here: Loony Lawnmower! by Martialis39. You can also find the code here. Now, here come the other words.
The jam has come and gone. The theme was machines. I am happy to report that I achieved the enviable place of 393. Rejoice!
To briefly recap my last post, I wanted to use Kaplay, I thought I would have more or less 6 hours of active hands on keyboard time and I considered using Playwright for end-to-end testing the game. I will attempt to recap what I actually achieved and what I learned.
For some reason that I cannot quite explain, I had always wanted to make a game where you control a robot lawnmower. Something about having to configure my own robot lawnmower has made me think “It would be alot more efficient and fun if I could just control it manually. Also it could move way faster”. So I decided to realize this typical power fantasy as part of this game jam.
I ended up using Kaplay, like I had planned. I did not use Playwright since I frankly ran out of time and I used some AI to create levels. I spent a lot of time trying to create a level editor but since I wasn’t really getting anywhere, I ended up crafting the first levels by hand. Once I had made some sample levels, CoPilot was able to contribute a few more levels and I ended up with a nice bit of variety. On the flip side, CoPilot was not very well-versed with Kaplay and I consider that a blessing, meaning I got to implement the basics structures of the game myself.
I don’t really have anything interesting to report from the jam or the development process itself. I don’t think I advanced computer science or the art of game design. I am truly happy that I managed to complete the game and submit it. I got nice feedback from folks and I’m excited to continue working on this game.
I have some ideas of how to expand upon the jam version and I think that that, plus the positive feedback, is probably the biggest thing I am taking away from this. Now, whenever I get the time, I can bypass the part where I’m deciding what to work on and instead work on this thing. Maybe at some point I can even release a more full-fledged version.
The trouble there is that I have a hard time deciding what my definition of done is. There are some things that I already had in mind (mainly sound, and some other effects to make things more appealing), but apart from that? Maybe a certain amount of levels, we’ll see.
To recap for future me and others, the experience was a successful one and made me excited to both continue working on this game and join other jams in the future.
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