48 Hour Game Challenge 2015: The First Five Hours

We were set up and ready to go. With an entertaining search for a car parking spot and a much needed snack trip to Woolworths behind us, we sat amongst the buzzing sprawl of tables. Said tables were laden with all manner of game development gear covering all available surfaces as everyone present prepped for the long haul. 48 hours of sleep deprived long haul.

The members of team Honeyvale, excluding our valiant programmer who was set to reinforce us shortly after the start, had already reflected on the previous weeks practice jam. We also had a plan for the first hour or so of what awaited us.

So, after an introduction of the event organisers and general administration stuff, it was time to hear the three words, representing themes, which would guide us for our development adventure.

– Swallow

– Thief

– Collapse

Bam! Time to start.

We raced outside to locate a quieter spot. We had rationed ourselves 30 minutes to establish a high level concept. Our discussion progressed rapidly while covering everything from the exploration of a digestive system to Northern-European mythology being thrown around. At last we settled on a general design.

Our bird-masked “Hero” would be a fearless individual whose one desire was to appease his Swallow Deity (Yes, of the avian variety). He would achieve this by collecting and offering up whatever items the mighty swallow desired. At the same time, the world would collapse around him as the great feathery beast grew restless.

The first few hours after that were industriously pursued by the team as we set up various systems to structure development, established an art style and smashed through some early code. Once reinforced by our programmer, our productivity increased even further.

We were doing so well in fact that after four hours we realised that we had implemented enough core features that we were actually ready to start level design and create our first playable. Hot Dam!

At this point it was evident that we were all getting hungry and so we took it in shifts to keep marching steadily on whilst the others grabbed whichever of the local options took their fancy (Burger Urge and Nandos won the day) .

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