I made a trick-or-treat themed game for PlayJam 6.
https://uguu-org.itch.io/picky-treats
I didn't think I would be making another game so soon, but the timing of this event worked out just right, and I have built up enough infrastructure that I could copy&paste, so I figured I would give it a go. Given the 3 day time limit, I cautiously scoped the project to one I knew I complete in a short time, which was to pick out the best candy out of similar looking candies.
The main thing I had to do was to draw some candies. Personally, getting a Snickers would be considered a "treat" and getting an Almond Joy would be considered a "trick". But of course if I drew those exactly as is, I would probably get in trouble with both Almond Joy fans and Mars lawyers. So I drew a bar-shaped thing with the tilted text "GOODBAR" for the "treat", and various goofy variations of that text as the "tricks". For variety, I added parodies of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Ghirardelli chocolate squares, with similarly goofy text variations. I like these especially since they had different aspect ratios compared to Snickers.
To make the text variations legible, the sprites have to be quite large. This meant I only need so few sprites to fill up the screen, and I could use a simple loop to test collision against all sprites and still get 30fps. As such, the coding side of things was completely straightforward with no complex algorithms or fancy math. I ended up submitting my entry early, and even had spare time to take pictures of the C/2023 A3 comet.
I got a bit of bonus feedback comments and ratings from fellow jam participants, which I thought was absolutely precious. I did take a few days to try all the other submissions as well, and it was interesting how people took different approaches to things. For example, there were several card games, but each one had a different interface for selecting cards. I thought Trick's Treat was most fun, and Treated had the best writing. Final results showed similar sentiments from other raters.
This has been a fun experience, both in making a game and rating other games. The time commitment is the same as ICFP but with none of the stress. It was time well spent.
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