Beardshaker Games & the Indiespeedrun 2013

From 24.10.13 till 26.10.13: Beardshaker Games accepted the challenge of the indiespeedrun:
http://www.indiespeedrun.com

This is a 48h game jam with such a great jury! There are guys like Ron Gilbert, Notch or Peter Molyneux, which look on this games!
I thought this was a good chance for Beardshaker to get a little bit more known.
Now I know, that there must be over 100 games in this jam - so, can we stick out? Just a little bit? - We will see. Everyone can play and rate the games one month. I'm wondering how our game will work and what are the other games.

The jam itself:
I've made us a timetable for this 48h. It included 7h for sleep the 1. night and 5h for the 2. one. I think, I just slept 5-7h overall.
After hitting the "Go"-Button we get our theme and the element for the game:
Theme: Curiosity
Element: Clay

We 4 guys talked 3h about different concepts. After no coincidence we hit the "Danger-Dice"-Button.
So we get another theme and element. We can't go back and take the other. We have to use this. The Danger Dice topics should be more difficulty to handle.
We got:
Theme: Learn to drive
Element: Hawaii

Booooom - Ideas all over the room!
"Let's make a big Maori-Warrior!!"
"Let's drive a big Maori-Warrior!!"
"Yes, it needs a dashboard and you don't know what is gas or the blinker!"
"He drive on a tiny bicycle, while he is learning to drive!"
"Let's put in pineapples and a ukulele!"
"Bright and shiny colors!"

We were on a roll. We felt in a good mood and get started with the rest of the plan. We was still in time. (I was a little bit proud about this.)
After that the hard developing-process was starting.

Micha started with the dashboardsetting.

Bene programmed the first lines of code.

Nappi went home, to record a song.

I started writing down all parts of our concept,
which was changing constantly.

We had much fun and much more to do. We shrink our concept and focus on the really really basic mechanic: Drive a big Maori-Warrior on a bicycle.
I think the feeling, when you just hit A+D to cycle in this colorful world is strong. But the theme is "Learn to drive". So we need to add the gameplay itself. We had good ideas and put in what we could in this short time.
The game is a little bit uncomfortable to play in this version. I hope, that the player can get the right good feeling and the confusion about the dashboard.

We build the final level 15m before uploading the game. The titlescreen was ready 5m before uploading.
We haven't played the whole level - there wasn't the time and the level isn't so easy. So we just tested the first 3-4 steps and say "okay, go for it". But we all know, that it is hard for the player to find out, what to do in this game. So I hope, the player give our game more than one try!

Now we know, that we need more practice to made a game in this short time. We know how hard it is to focus on the basics - how hard it is to define and name the basics!
Everyone of us learned his own little lessons.
Now I know: music and sounds take much longer, as I have thought and planned. The short clear leading between the team in the last 2 hours was amazing. I should remember this, if we had some conflicts. And it was also fun to sleep in the studio on an air bed under a desk - felt like a 5-year-old x)

I want to spend some more hours for this game. But this has to wait until the voting is over.


Here is the first color sketch of the game: