Recently I published my small puzzle platformer for the Brackeys game jam called REPL. I guess it's time to share some of what I've learned and what I could have done better.

REPL is a puzzle platformer game where you're a little robot awakened in a forsaken facility found by a human, with the theme Strange Places for the jam. Fun fact, I winged it most of the time:) The schedule of this jam was quite bad for me as I was on holiday. But since my last jam was so fun, I figured I might give it a shot as well. I had to prepare assets, the project folder and get the general vibe early before the jam, then bam, hacking my way through most of it. I basically spent the first day and the last three days of the jam doing nothing at all other than making bug fixes and dragging stuff around.

REPL stands for Read Eval Print loop, and the reason I picked the name is because it sounds nice and sophisticated lol, y'know, because the main character is a robot. Man should I take How to Name Things 101 or something?

the stuff that went right

I received a lot of compliments about the game's artstyle and graphics. It's relatively smooth (except the beginning cutscene on the web build, weird things happen with WebGL idk), and there's also like thousands chunks of grass swaying on the ground. What's my secret?

Actually there's little post-processing filters going on, the game is literally rendered at low res, 640x360, then upscaled it to your native screen resolution. In addition, GPU instancing and some culling tricks are used for the grass generation. With all that going on plus some rain particles, it's a good thing it runs pretty smoothly on many computers. My laptop is a 2018 Dell Latitude model, not even a gaming laptop, and it can hit 60 FPS just fine. 

I rigged the character on Mixamo, which works amazing on humanoids, but on robot mechanical parts move very strangely. Well, 3D modelling isn't my domain, so let's make it pixelated, and nobody notices a thing:) Maybe one day I'll learn blender and make my own character, who knows.

The style I'm going for is something toon-ish, vibrant, and animated. If you zoom in, the character is actually moving in a very choppy, stop-motion way. It's animated at 16 FPS. Unlike every other thing, which is by default at 60 FPS. 

I also drew a lot of inspiration from A Short Hike:) Was aiming for something that look cozy and it one hits the spot.

So there you have it, it's a combination of performance, hiding the flaws, and decent visuals.

the stuff that could've been better

gameplay & mechanics

I think the game mechanics needs a lot of rework. The respawn mechanic of crates is definitely not planned. I figured if I put the respawn point just a bit higher, it can respawn right on top of existing boxes. Some players noticed it immediately, found it funny and interesting, some had no clue how tf to solve it, and some had weird physics interaction where it spawned inside the other box, as you can see the comments. It definitely is a wacky mechanic and needs more testing. Besides, it lacks in game explaination. I was kind of struggling between having a dialogue for it or not at all and letting you guys figure out.

writing

Dialogues, story and writing could also use a lot of work. Like, idk how to write. I tried to keep the dialogues minimal and optional so you had to explore and piece them together to get it, but there's like only a few of them. I was imagining some sort of character like The Defect in Slay the Spire, plus some lore about a failed construction project, like in Cowboy Bebop (which my pfp is really giving). I was going for some sci-fi forsaken facility kind of theme, where the world moved on and you're a leftover, which circles back to the theme Strange Places of the jam. I got constrained by my writing skills haha. I didn't even write about how the character existed in the first place or what any of this is about and I just had time to clarify it more now. Eh, you don't need great writing to make a game, but it's a plus.

the part where it ends

Despite the flaws, I'm proud of the game. It's fun devouring coffee and pulling an all-nighter on a small project, plus hanging out with other fellas on the Discord server was fun. I kind of have a thing for techno and sci-fi vibes. I love to see people suffering with my games and discovering all weird bugs haha. Might reuse this style in future games.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, like share subscribe

- mintram