Cab.Blog

This month, I participated in a monthly indie game jam hosted by the awesome Mount Royal Game Society, in Montreal. My friend Oliver did the gruesome task of coding everything, while I provided him with sexy primates and interface elements. I put in a lot more work then I thought but at the end, the "demo" ended up being a near finished dating sim/lucky wheel/stats management game!

Here is how Oliver described the game on the forum, so I'll quote him!

The game is about manipulating a gorilla's decisions to help intimidate his or her rivals, win over his or her love interest(s!), and become the all-around most popular gorilla in the jungle. 

You win once you are able to conquer all 7 of the other gorillas with either love or aggression. These confrontations are controlled by choosing options presented to you on a spinning wheel, and raising the stats you need. The stats are: Bananas, Hunger, Poop, Love, and most importantly, Je ne sais Quois (JNSQ).

The catch is that you can't always get what you want! The hungrier you get, the bigger the "get a banana" section of the spinning wheel gets, and the more difficult it becomes to do anything else. The same applies for trying to hold in your poop for too long! 

In a fight with a rival gorilla, you'll have to work up your JNSQ and humble your opponent into submission. Steal his bananas so that he can't recover from hunger, or fling poop at him to tarnish his image! 

In a contest of love, you'll be trying to impress your date by sharing bananas and flirting. Just be careful you don't eat too many bananas because that "Fling Poop" section of your wheel just keeps getting bigger, and that's generally frowned upon in social situations.

It was my first try at making an actual game and I totally fell in love with the process! The game got excellent feedback, a lot of giggles and reactions, when a new contender appeared on screen, either flirting of flinging poo at its date/rival.

I made exactly 40 different gorillas, each of the four classes with its status. Here is a sample of those actions. I'll put up screenshots of the game, to show the different backgrounds and icons, once my dear programmer recovers from the last two days of insane programming marathon. Click for a bigger image.