Game Jam Postmortems #2 - Dreams of Mya
My First Game Jam: Summer 2017 was aimed at absolute beginners but all skill levels were encouraged. The optional theme was "Dreams". I figured since this was my second game jam, this would be appropriate for where I'm currently at with game development. I attempted to make a better game than the one I made in my true first game jam! Dreams of Mya is a twin stick shooter with a hint of dungeon crawl.
Story
I had the idea of going deeper into a dream, similar to Inception. My story idea for this game was as follows. Mya, the main character dives deeper into her dreams to discover different aspects of herself becoming stronger in the process. She is however, trapped in a maze full of strange but aggressive creatures. One thing that this game and my last game have in common is that there isn't much to the story in game. I really didn't have intentions on bringing in game elements to the story, but more wouldn't have hurt.
Gameplay
I like the feel of Mya moving and shooting in the game. The enemies in my opinion are reasonably challenging, though this could be from me mastering the game while developing it. I would have like to have added a few more enemies for a little variation including (SPOILER ALERT) an end boss.
Graphics and Sound
Since this game wasn't just a simple 4 color palette compared to my first game jam, the artwork was a little more challenging to conceive. Regardless, I still enjoyed making the sprites and artwork. There was definitely more that could have been added to add variation to the different dream levels. I would have also like to have made the Mya's walk animation a little smoother.
I was aiming for making weird, dream like, retro music. Not sure if I actually succeeded in that endeavor... Other than that, I don't really have much to add about sound.
Overall
It was a cool experience joining this game jam. I really look forward to seeing what other games are spawned from my future game jams. With more game jam games under my belt, I'm sure the quality of the games will get better. Check out Dream of Mya if you would like to try it out.