Shortfall (Trijam #270 / HEJ 2024 May jam)

The short story of a 5-hour Trijam game (khmm, overtime) that turned into something bigger.

Maybe making games similar to Vampire Survivors is cliché nowadays, but I'm not known to give any dangs about such things. So when I saw the theme for Trijam #270 ("in the zone"), I felt that it was time I've made one.

Even though I kinda managed to reach the playable state at the 3 hour mark, I opted to go overtime, since I had a bunch of important items on my todo list. This time I streamed the entire development (apart from the "planning" phase which consisted of making a half-assed todo list and gathering some 3rd party assets), the VOD is up on YouTube if anyone's interested in this sort of thing:

What I miserably failed at is naming the game properly (typical Fodi crap, when I get stuck with naming I get really stuck), so the entry was anti-titled Something Something Zones Something, very much reusing the Family Guy reference that I already used in a similar situation (for the Ludum Dare jam game Something Something Delivery Something). Oh well :)

After finding the game (both the development and the gameplay) way too much fun, we opted to build upon it and submit the result for the Hungarian HEJ (Havi Egy Játék / One Game a Month) jam. That's how Shortfall came to be. I even updated it for like two weeks after the jam based on the enormously useful feedback we received (thanks to everyone who participated!), which is not my usual modus operandi.

I streamed some of the development on the 2nd of July:

And a bit on the 7th as well:

I'd also like to say thanks to the amazing GrafxKid for the amazing free assets I used (Tibor was very much occupied with other things this month). Be sure to check 'em out on Itch!

As you may or may not know, my goal for 2024 is to make at least 12 video game prototypes and next year choose one and turn it into an actual full-fledged Steam release. Shortfall is very much on the shortlist (pun intended) for this, along with Attractaball and Hedges of Hell which is the topic of my next blog post if I'm not too lazy to write it :)

You can try the latest build of Shortfall on Itch (per usual). It runs okay on mobile and supports gamepad controls too, but I highly recommend using the keyboard + mouse control scheme. One warning though: if you have motion sickness, you might find the turning mechanic a bit uneasy; the game is playable without it, but then again you might as well play Vampire Survivors :D