Losing Blood
A game about bleeding out and magic
In Losing Blood you are playing as a blood mage, trapped and defeated in the basement of a wizard's tower. Until you are suddenly released, but now you're bleeding out. Your spells now consume your blood, but you can defeat enemies to replenish it.
This game was made for Mini Jam 200: Freedom. The limitation was finite quantity.
Losing Blood was the first gamejam I made in a group. It started as a test run of developing games with my friends but ended up causing me to start teaching my friends game development as well as begin a larger focus on multi-disciplinary skills and a producer role.
Details
Made In
Unity
Publishing On
Itch.io
Team Members
Michael Hoenig
(
Designer, Music
)
Cyil Padlan
(
Designer, Artist
)
Hannah Deshon
(
Designer, Artist
)
Contributions
My Contributions:
- Producer
- Programming Lead
- Design
- Artist
- Level Designer
- Source Control
Duration
5 days
Pre-Production
Our pre-production lasted roughly 1 day, going over the general design of our game as well as the mood and mechanics. We started off with a general style of our game, which was immediately fantasy. So we then started to think of games that we could make in a 5 day time span. The limitaiton and theme played far less of a role in our ideation as one normally does. We eventually decided on a top-down arpg where you are playing as a blood wizard absorbing your opponent's blood to keep you from bleeding out. We then tied a narrative to it, which sadly didn't make it in the game.
Development
Development started really well, within the first day we had a music track, title screen and player model. I began setting up the spells and enemy AIs using Unity's NavMesh. We knew that we wanted to have different enemies do different things and multiple levels that culminate into a boss fight at the top of a wizard tower. However day 2 of the game jam we had one member drop out due to health reasons, and day 3 the other 2 members dropped out due to personal reasons. This meant that for the final 2 days of development time, I was the only member still capable of working. I did my best to work on the remaining unfinished art assets, which are the two wizard boss fight in the 2nd level. I also scrapped an additional floor that was planned to be worked on by me but needed to be cut to de-scope. Through it though, the game was able to be finished with all originally intended features, although all spells were drawn by me instead of a dedicated artist,
Reflection
Goals & Scope
Overall, the goal and scope were met. We did plan for an additional floor, as well as cutscenes and a tutorial to the tower however all of the spells and enemies and boss fight were able to be implemented fully which was a huge success.
Mechanics & Fun
I feel that the mechanics of the game, at their core, are fun. They are quite unbalanced and need fine-tuning, but the constantly draining blood forcing you to be aggressive as well as the "life-steal" mechanic to stay alive is a nice pressure. I think the spells were the lowest point of mechanics as they are generally unbalanced due to lack of play-testing but each are able to be used successfully.
Process & Timeline
The original timeline was stuck to until about the 4th day of the gamejam when things quickly needed to be cut to re-scope the game. The overall development process though was extremely fun, and although it had a sour ending, making losing blood was extremely fun.
Team & Player Feedback
The feedback we got during this jam was overwhelmingly positive, primarily complimenting the art and the feeling of power the player had. We did receive some bug reports, mostly to do with dying and then restarting, but regardless feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
Losing Blood was my 2nd game developed with this group and my first non-solo gamejam. With that in mind, some team-related issues were expected as it was also my first time acting as a producer role for a project. Dealing with the project management was quite new to me as well as assigning tasks on what to work on.
Failures
I believe the biggest failure of the project was the lack of polish and inconsistent artstyle. Our artists dropping out half-way through led to me taking up the remaining assets and they look noticeably worse and inconsistent in comparison.
The game also suffered from poor tutorialisation, something that was planned but scrapped early on due to time constraints.