This is Space Whale

- an experiment in improvisational game development for Godot Wild Jam 77.

The theme was metamorphosis. I started with the concept of some kind of falling sand game, with elements changing into other elements. Pretty quickly into that, I realized I don't know how to make falling sand physics in the Godot game engine. So, rather than fight the engine, I switched to rigid bodies and went with a Suika (watermelon game) concept. But, the game I wanted wasn't suika, I really just wanted an ambient toy, where the player gets to craft a scene and enjoy watching it grow. So, I went back to my trusty old Inkscape and did up some vector graphics.

Players can add lakes to planets, plant trees, water them, watch them grow, watch birds and clouds appear. Then, when there's sufficient oxygen, humans might start building cities. Eventually humans will hit the machine age of AI and those cities will start to resemble trees again. (L-Trees instead of sprites).

What went well:

 This was a good chance to get back into Godot after a few months absence. Development went pretty smoothly with no major hiccups, custom physics notwithstanding. I didn't use any plugins and Godot is pretty competent right out of the box. 

I took it easy on this game, contributing only a few hours a day, when I felt like it. So it was pretty sustainable. It didn't feel like the hard crunch game jams can often cause.

What would I add, given more time:

I was hoping to make additional stages after humanoid civilizations appeared. I might have liked to make a machine age, where AI become the dominant species, planets "wake up" and start moving around the map. Or perhaps they reach out to each other and form connections.

I also thought about making baby whales emerge, either from seed pods, or from deep inside planets, which would be cracked open by asteroids. The baby whales would operate independently from the player, but they'd flock to the Space Whale using some kind of boids algorithm.

 There's not much of challenge to this "game", so given more time, I might want to incorporate a new puzzle mode or give the Aliens more aggressive offensive capabilities. But combat would take away from the chill vibe I wanted. In any case, the space aliens need to be more interactive.

If the game is all about chill vibes and watching little planets grow, I definitely need more and better art assets. And perhaps some additional behaviours for things that might appear on planets.

For a little easy-going jam game, I didn't put together professional menus or settings or anything like that. Those would need to be improved if I continued with this game.

Conclusion:

Successful game jam effort. Not much of a "game", more of a toy or experience. I probably wouldn't continue developing this particular game, but some of the ideas might find their way into other games. I dig the idea of Suika around a circular map (like a planet), so I could see developing that further.

This jam has a ton of high-quality submissions, so I don't expect to place near the top this time around. The magic was in you all along, and it's about the friends we made along the way. Wait a minute? Better luck next time.