RGB Runner Devlog

Over the summer, I took part in a week-long game jam called "3-Color 3-Button Game Jam." The goal of the jam was to create a game as an individual or as a team with the only guidelines being: up to three buttons for input and up to three colors for the graphics (creative title right?). At large, the idea was to limit yourself and the complexity of your games, so the rules were flexible.

Going into the jam, I had brainstormed with a friend an idea similar to Fireboy and Watergirl, a cooperative game focused on the concept that fire and water can't interact with one another

This concept drove my development from start to finish, though it eventually morphed from a cooperative experience to a competitive one.

I quickly realized that the only way to work in this concept of three different elements/players would be to assign only one button for each player. My brainstorming then focused on how I would make a game with only one button seem fun. I decided on each button being able to do different things at different times.

My full idea at this point was a three-player endless runner where each player could jump and temporarily hover by air rolling. The part about the elements not being able to interact was suspended at this point in development as the idea was no longer a co-op game.

Once the week began, I got to prototyping in Unity with rectangles for everything, the player, the ground, and the obstacles.

Through prototyping I found that the current air roll mechanic (where the player could stop hovering by pressing the button again) made the game too easy. I figured that making the air roll a set amount of time would cause the player to have to plan ahead if they had enough time to complete the air roll before they had to jump again. This added a level of complexity to the mechanic that would otherwise make it overpowered.

Since I was the only one working on the game, after I finished the programming, I had to move to the art. And boy I did not expect it to take so long!

I decided to make the game in pixel art style to make creating the graphics marginally quicker without it looking too bad. I started working on the graphics on the Wednesday of the jam. Heres where I get to show you some pictures from development:

This is the first pixel art and eventually animation I worked on for the game. Once I made the animation for one player, it was just a matter of hue shifting to create the animations for the other players.

The rest of the art came fairly naturally, and eventually it came to look like this:

At this final stage is when I re-implemented the concept of the colors not being able to mix. Each player could only stand on their own color, and would have to avoid the other players' platforms.

All that was left was to add a menu screen and a game over screen for when eventually all players died.

The final result can be found and played free here on my itch.io.