Game Jams

☆ SPACE CUTIE RESCUE ☆

Made for Girly Game Jam 2024 over 3 days. Theme was Attraction, and to make a girly game. Programming, game design, VFX, animation are by me. 2D art by @cosmicotton. Music by @IchinoseSound. Playable Link: https://kumorikuma.itch.io/space-cutie-rescue.

Inspiration came from side-scrolling shooter games like Ikaruga and Sky Force, and the visuals were heavily inspired by Kirby Dreamland. I had never made a side scrolling shooter before, and the biggest challenge here actually came from building tools to iterate on the level design efficiently. I ended up using a system of bezier curves to define enemy paths, and a faux timeline-esque system of spawning enemy groups.

A big flaw in the game came from the weapon and health upgrade system. I wanted to give the player the feeling of power progression, but it essentially meant that if you played well, you would continue to do well and the entire level was tuned around that. If you did not play well, then you fell behind into a negative feedback cycle and couldn't continue to get upgrades. Even though I added failsafe catch-ups before the boss, most people didn't end up making it there. I could've tuned the game to be easier, but the struggle I was having was that I still wanted the game to present a challenge to experienced side-scrolling shooter players. For a game that probably wasn't compelling enough to replay until they got better at it, I think it would've been sufficient to de-couple the upgrades from the player's skill and give them out at certain checkpoints to force it.

If I were to think about how to make the game more compelling, we were definitely limited by the lack of time to implement more content and variety into the game. There were only three enemy types in the end. With the constant promise of new and fun things to see, there would've probably been more motivation to continue playing instead of thinking "I've seen enough of this game". There was also a "splitting the ship" mechanic in the game that would've added more depth to the gameplay, but I ran out of time to really explore that too much.

[ C O S M I C O F F I N ]

Short 3-phase mecha boss fight game inspired by the Donut Planet from Bee and Puppycat. Made solo in 11 days for @Acerola_t's Acerola Jam 0. Theme was Aberration. All assets were made by me minus audio, fonts and some VFX textures. Music by @aeveliefindyourself and Rizwan Ashraf. Download Link: https://kumorikuma.itch.io/cosmicoffin. Project Link: https://github.com/kumorikuma/acerola_jam_0.

This one was so fun to make! I went into this wanting to make a fun boss fight, inspired by Furi. I had just finished watching Bee and Puppycat (the entire series is available on youtube) and had this clear vision in my head of turning the Donut Planet into a boss fight level. This was also around the time Armored Core VI came out.

Donut Planet from Bee and Puppycat

Overall, I think I achieved the vibe and visuals I was going for. The planet crumbles around it and pieces of it are sucked into the black hole looming in the background that's about to consume the planet. I spent a lot of time making it a pretty visual spectacle and I'm happy with how it turned out! It was my first time making VFX, and modeling anything in a long time, so that was really fun tackling everything I don't usually work on. I loved how the disintegrating arena also progressively made the game harder as there was less space to stand on.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend as much time on the gameplay as I would've liked. Apart from spending too much time on the visuals, making the boss AI behave in a way of trying to avoid the player while simulataneously staying in the center of the fake infinite arena was challenging. As a result, I didn't get to playtest the game and it quickly became apparent that the game was way too hard, mostly because the controls felt clunky and unintuitive, and the game was lacking SFX.

If I had more time to work on it, I would've spent more time making the boss have a larger variety of attack patterns. The limited moveset of the boss really made it feel quite repetitive and boring. I messed around with a lock-on system to make the targeting easier and dropped it because I thought it made the game too easy, but I think it would've been a good idea because "FPS aiming" part ended up being un-fun, and I would've loved to redirect that challenge to focus on avoiding the boss enemy patterns. With the SFX, I had the sounds that I wanted in my head, but it was really difficult to find the exact sound effects that I wanted, and that meshed well together. I always end up leaving this as the last thing, but that definitely hurt the game as it would've helped with the clarity of what's happening in the game.

Galactic Billiards

Made for GMTK Game Jam 2024 over 4 days. Art was done by me, and I also worked on game design and programming with two others. Theme was Built to Scale. Playable Link: https://nobiy.itch.io/cosmic-billiards.

This one was tricky. We had a really difficult time coming up with an idea for the theme, and ended up settling on "pool with to-scale planets". The "to-scale" part ended up being the biggest challenge. Because of the sheer size difference between the larger planets like Jupiter, and the smaller ones like Earth and Mars, it was pretty much unplayable to just put them onto a pool table. Instead of having them roll on a plane like normal balls, I suspended them and they all moved with their origins on the plane instead, which helped a lot.

Our first idea was having a progression where you started out playing with the smaller planets and when you sunk them into the pockets, the playing board would increase in size and more planets would be added. This sorta worked, but it still felt pretty boring to play even after introducing "upgrades" to the planets and a points system, regular pool was still more fun.

The breakthrough moment came to me pretty late in development. I had been playing Peglin recently and loved the chaotic feel of it. While you had some agency in the general direction of what you wanted to do, the exact result was unpredictable and delightfully messy. What if we spawned so many smaller planets amongst the larger planets such that it didn't really *matter* that you couldn't make them out too much? I added an effect where whenever you hit a big planet like Jupiter it would just spawn a bunch of random moons in different directions. When my friend added an effect to Uranus where it would suck in all the planetoids around it and cause them to bounce off of each other everywhere, we realized we were onto something. This was now "pool pachinko".

【Ｓｕｎｓｅｔ　Ｄｅｌｉｖｅｒｙ】

My second ever game jam! Made for Ludum Dare 53. Theme was Delivery. I created the 3D graphics, and worked on the design and programming. @nobiy handled the audio, dialogue, and also worked on design and programming. @cosmicotton created the 2D art. Playable Link: https://kumorikuma.itch.io/sunset-delivery.

The inspo for this one comes from those synthwave / vaporwave 80s retro style driving gifs, but turned into an arcade-style racing game. I'm really happy with how it turned out visually, I think I nailed the reference visually. It also felt super nice to seamlessly transition between the three different levels while never stopping the car for dialogue or anything. I broke up the levels into tilesets that I could dynamically build the level from based on the player's progression. I especially loved how the sun in the background would gradually set as the time ran out and together with the timer added constant tension.

"vaporwave driving"

Honestly, this was the game was when I realized I really liked making games and motivated me to make the transition into the games industry and I wouldn't be where I am today without it.