DJ Hamster
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DJ Hamster is a game developed for the 7 day Juniper Dev "Serious" Game Jam. Play as the titular DJ Hamster and keep the crowd pumped by spinning your dj wheel as fast as possible. But uh oh, the crowd is a little too hyped and is throwing stuff on the dj stand, try to dodge their stuff and keep the crowd pumped.
Details
Made In
Unity
Publishing On
Itch.io
Team Members
Michael Hoenig
(
Designer
)
Cyil Padlan
(
Designer, Artist
)
Hannah Deshon
(
Designer
)
Contributions
My Contributions:
- Producer
- Project Management
- Source Control
- Design
- Audio
- All Programming
Duration
7 days
Pre-Production
Our pre-production was quite short, hearing that we had to make a game about spinning, we came up with a few ideas, but one of the things that we really liked was a hamster wheel and the rhythm game from Dave the Diver. This ended up being combined with Muse Dash/Dinosaur Game to create a concept of a hamster spinning on a DJ Wheel. Everyone then began working on concept art on what the final game was going to be.
As this is a gamejam we didn't want to spend too much time on pre-production, so after about one day of ideation and design work, we headed straight into development.
Development
And things immediately went wrong. I decided I wanted to start working on my dev blogs with this gamejam, as I usually don't get the opportunity to do so during university projects. I was quite happy with the results of the blog, but the development had it's issues. On the second day of the jam, 2 of our 4 members quit for personal reasons. This caused us to have to immediately and heavily descope, going from our original design to a significantly shrunken design. Cyil and I were the only members continuing development more. Eventually through planning and dedication, we were able to finish the development in time, I was the only person planning on programming so only our art was at risk from the decreased members.
Cyil locked in hard and was able to finish the desired obstacles in time, and they were able to easily be slotted into the game. Although we had to cut custom music, play-testing, and some other features we were able to finish the game off.
Reflection
Goals & Scope
We managed to complete our goal of making a 2D endless platformer, however due to the unforeseen incident of half our group dropping out, we had suddenly gone from well-scoped to significantly over-scoped. Luckily it happened during the second day of the jam and therefore we were able to re-scope rather quickly, but our original design was not made.
Mechanics & Fun
I feel our mechanics were flat. The running felt a little awkward and although the music speeding up and slowing down in response to how fast you are running, it felt lacking. We got a lot of good feedback from the gamejam participants though, and ended up ranking in the top 50% submissions. Originally including a fail state and score was intended, but due to the de-scoping those mechanics disappeared.
Process & Timeline
Our entire timeline was thrown into non-existence as pretty much all project management had to be thrown to the side to finish the game on time without overworking ourselves (which we did anyways). The crunch was very fun, but in future projects I think having features tiered by importance to know what to cut in the event of over-scoping would be beneficial.
Team & Player Feedback
One of the most common feedback points from both the team and players was the lack of polish on the game. Polish was something that quickly fell apart during the descoping and as such it was only natural that the lack of polish was going to reflect poorly on the game. Otherwise though, the lack of a score and fail states do leave some to be desired but the overwhelming vibe of cutesy game was beloved, and the hamster design was complimented frequently.
DJ Hamster was my 3rd game making with this group, affectionally referred to as RedBack Studios. Although we had a massive descope, we still managed to get out something in the end that although flat and simple, is fun for a short while.
Failures
As mentioned frequently, the biggest failure of this gamejam is everything lost from the original design when de-scoping. The loss of polish, score and various other features causes the game to feel bland and flat. In saying that, I still enjoy it heavily and I am proud of what was able to be accomplished having basically everything planned over-turned.
I may some day return to this game to add polish and implement the features that were planned but never included, but until that day, the game will remain lacking from the de-scope.