Few moments ago judgment of
GamesJamGAMM ended. I wanted to write post about it after that. So here it is.
About contest. It was Russian game development contest where participants created games in 7 days in given theme. Theme was ‘phobias’. I think rules must be more adjusted, because they have some unlogical moments. For example, it is possible to participate with any old game if it suitable for theme. Even if it was developing already two years by team. But prizes for win places was tasty (money and other shit) so many developers droped to this contest. But I wanted to write not about prizes.
I participated in GamesJamGAMM as warmup before Ludum Dare. I wanted to make a little game with any zest and not counted for winning. So here borned idea about taphophobia – fear of be buried alive. Firstly I wanted to make game like film ‘Buried’ with Ryan Reynolds. It should have been puzzle, where main character every night see dream about he is buried in a coffin but when oxygen ends he waking up in bed. And dream by dream player got new details and must use it to avoid burial and bad dream ends. But when realized how much energy and time realization will take, I was forced to change game in something more simple. And shocking. So here concept was reborn as it now in final game called
taphophobia. No spoilers, just try it.
It took only 3 evenings to complete development. My woman recorded a lot of breathing sounds, that was cropped and insesrted into game. I think it turned pretty cool – something between fear and excitation. As I wanted. Also She made final theme that was originally made not for game but I think it sounds pretty organically. Thanks a lot.
So I put game to my favourite
Newgrounds. And after that to
GameJolt where I recently registered. Also you can check it at
contest page. Sure game wasn’t featured and got odd feedback. Furthermore it now have lowest rating of all my games. But most interesting things was started few days later.
First, I’ve got not bad feedback from members of contest. I thinked it will be more negative. But all comments was fun irony or finding of significance of game. Second, I had very weird conversation in Skype. One Newgrounds user found me and said (quote) “you are fucking genius, sir”. It was amazing that this man from Italia was not lazy and wrote directly to me. I was so happy. I think only this convesation was enough for making game. And I think he is my first real fan who is not from my friends. And third, after I’ve got reference to a taphophobia game in Twitter, I suspected that something is wrong. I’m googled my game. And what I found? And think it awesome, but I found my game at
indiegames.com. I’m not sure that it a real cool site, but the fact that it was made by creators of Gamasutra is enough for me.
So what we have at the end. Game that was in really weak rhytm got really positive and interesting feedback for me. Official results of contest was predictable for my game. It got 53th place from 105 games. In the middle. But you know, it was not about place. Will do something like that again.
