Orbital Decay

Rated #25 in gameplay and #34 overall out of 307 entries in 1-BIT JAM #2.

Click here to play in browser

Orbital Decay is a game that was I was a part of creating for 1-BIT JAM #2 in 2023. The project had 2 team members and the full game was made within seven days.

The TL;DR

  • 7 day game jam

  • Team of myself and two developers

  • Project completed and submitted by deadline

  • The best scoring game jam project I’ve been a part of

The Requirements

  • 7 days of development time

  • The game must use only two colors

  • The theme is “Start with everything and end with nothing.”

  • Playable in browser

The Jam

  • We spent a long initial meeting trying to find an idea that worked well with the theme

  • The idea of a reverse draft was decided upon as the core of the game

  • We identified our lack of art assets as a weakness, even with the 2 color restriction

  • I learned to use Aseprite during the jam to create the animations for the game

  • We playtested and modified the core gameplay to find something that worked well then polished it

  • The core idea could be further refined with more time

What I learned

  • It’s crucial to get the game’s core systems up and running to test and iterate on them sooner than I have been in this and prior jams

  • Aseprite is a great tool for making pixel sprites and animations, and I was able to do much more with it than I expected

  • With limited visuals, sound becomes much more important and impactful to the overall game feel

  • Even simple animations can make something like a main menu much more impactful

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