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