Recently I decided to participate in the 2013 Indie Speed Run, a rapid game development contest sponsored by The Escapist.
I’ve been doing quite a few of these game jam type events lately, but this time, I decided to call in some help. So, I asked my friend Pete Mitchell, who some of you may know as the lead singer of No More Kings, if he would be willing to do some art and animation for the contest. He graciously agreed and we entered the contest.
For Indie Speed Run, you choose your own start time, any time in the month of September. Then you are assigned a random element and a random theme. You then have exactly 48 hours to build and submit your game. After that, in October, the games are presented to the public as well as a panel of industry veterans serving as judges for the contest. Unlike similar events, this one had an entry fee of $25, but I still felt like it was worth it with the judging panel.
So, we pressed the button to start the contest and were given our random element and theme. We were assigned the element of “Yeti” and the theme of “Parenting”. After a few moments of panic we actually started going through a very productive brainstorming process.
After 48 hours and some genuinely scary times where I thought we weren’t going to be able to submit a finished product, we ended up with a little 2D platformer called Yeti Family Values. In it, you play a Yeti Dad who’s trying to collect food for his family while also simultaneously trying to keep his kids from falling off ledges or getting attacked by monster crabs.
Although our submission is still full of bugs, balance issues, and other problems, I’m still very proud of what we were able to accomplish in such a short time. You can play the game here: