Grow Above - 60 Minute Jam #2 Submission Devlog

Grow Above is my submission to the 60 Minute Jam #2 with the theme 'Big and Small'. Going into this I wasn't too sure what I was going to create or how I'd even create something worthwhile in only 60 minutes but upon looking through the submissions to the previous 60 minute game jam, I realised I was majorly over-complicating things.

For a game to be good, it doesn't need a lengthy emotional story with twists and turns at every opportunity. Some of the most well-known and popular games have started with an extremely simple premise or mechanic that stuck in people's minds. The greatest example of this would be Flappy Bird. Even to this day there are many different courses about game development that use Flappy Bird as a beginner example for people to get used to creating games because it's just that simple of a game. No  complex strategies or flashy graphics required. Just a bird that's terrible at staying airborne.

If it wasn't obvious by now, Flappy Bird was a pretty big inspiration for Grow Above. I knew I wanted to make a game with a simple gameplay loop that doesn't require too much brainpower to understand. Grow Above initially started out with the player needing to grow to specific sizes to pass through obstacles. However, when fiddling around with the size-changing speeds for the player, I noticed the player square actually becoming airborne whilst shrinking which gave me the idea to make that unintentional occurence into a key gameplay mechanic. All it took was a little tweaking of the code to make it so that the square doesn't properly start falling until it has nearly fully returned to its smaller size, sort of like dropping a slinky but in reverse.

Overall, I'd say I probably spent more time than I'd have liked fiddling around with particle effects but at the same time I'm happy that I did. I think the dust particles coming from the player really do well in adding that little extra bit of life to the game, making it feel a lot more polished than it really is. I can say with confidence that I'm happy with how the game turned out, especially considering the strict time constraints placed upon it.