Snowscape Fixer

This game was created for the New Year New Skills Game jam in the span of approximately 5 days. (I had to finish the jam early).

The theme of the Jam was "Creating Connections".

Snowscape Fixer

Snowscape Fixer is a simple platformer where you go around the map and fix telephone poles.

It is set in a time when phone lines were still important and when today's modern appliances all seem like science fiction.

The main protagonist has the unfortunate luck of working on Christmas with an overly chatty radio operator. He definitely does not want to be there but the job is to be done.

Jump and walk through the levels as the weather gets progressively worse on your journey.

Game Instructions

Important: You can drop 3 tiles without game-over triggering. The easiest way to measure this distance is one tree + a wall tile above. This is a safe drop distance and you'll need to make drops like that.

It's a Pico-8 game so the normal control scheme applies:

Arrow buttons to move

X button is the X on the keyboard

O button (looks square also) is the C on the keyboard.

So all you need are the 4 arrows and X + C.

• X to jump
• Up + C to fix poles (got to press up first)
• Down + C to drop ledges

And that's basically all you need to control the game.

There are two modes:

Story Mode - 10 levels (handmade) - About 5 minutes, with a little story sprinkled in there

Endless Mode - Very basic random generated levels -- You can 'regenerate' the level manually if you deem it uncompletable. Also sometimes the levels are generated without objectives. It is what it is.

Devlog

Read on if you are interested in the game-jam experience and want to know more about the journey of creating Snowscape Fixer. This was my first game jam.

Theme Reveal

As the theme was revealed to be "Creating Connections" my gut reaction was. 'Ooookay I'm dropping out', 'This is not something I like' ... But that's not how you pick up new skills. Not how you improve. So I started milling the theme a little bit.

What started to materialize in front of my eyes was a game set in a cozy winterscape. Kind of relaxing where you go around and fix telephone poles. Kind of a lonely but beautiful experience. Something like 'Firewatch'.

I liked the idea so I started working on my game.

Goals

• Complete a game
• Make something that has atmosphere
• Keep it short and small scope
• Learn a lot

Now these were nice goals. First jam, so definitely I had no idea what I was getting into. And also my first platformer. And the most important: I wanted to really capture this 'Firewatch'-y appeal so I wanted a definite atmosphere for my game. This really hard for me as I'm pretty bad at pixel art. (or any art for the matter of fact)

A platformer?

Looking at Pico-8 the system I'm working with and my idea I came to the simple conclusion: this will be a platformer. It only makes sense. However, this was my first platformer. I had no idea it's so hard to make a platformer feel 'good'. 

I started learning about using MAP() for the tilemap and started setting up a simple collision system. I fog the basics fairly quick, however my animations were horrible and the actual platforming felt really janky.

However, I think I did an overall good job with the tileset and I was pretty happy how the game felt visually. It had this 'cozy' winter atmosphere I was going for.

Some early gifs with me testing out systems to see what works and what does not:

It took a while to nail down all the systems. So many moving parts in a platformer. You would think that you just slap some collision detection on your player and BOOM platformer ready. NOPE.

Eventually, through some trial and error I got the systems to a point where I felt they are 'good-enough'. Not Super Meatboy or Celeste good, but okay. Good enough.

It's kind of boring

After I was happy with the actual plaforming I went on and designed 10 levels. I really liked the visuals, I loved the little 'loading' screen between levels yet I felt the game was pretty boring.

There was not much of a challenge and not horribly much to do on the levels except go up and then come down. Done.

I think I had the style nailed down but I struggled to add any enemies. For some reason, I did not think of animals for a long time. All I was thinking were traps and contraptions but they just did not fit the levels. Then it slowly came to me: boars would fit this environment perfectly. Why did I not think of this before?

So I added boars and the game became "not quite as boring". It was still not a thrilling experience BUT I wasn't going for that anyway. Remember Firewatch was a great inspiration and that game is more of a walking simulator.

In fact for the first half of the JAM I thought of my game as a walking simulator. Only after I added boars did I get the platforming to the level it is in the final release as it felt more like a platformer after that.

Short but Sweet

Gametime was still an issue. I may have kept the scope too small. 5 minutes is fine for a jam and the gameplay is kind of enough for 5 minutes. But is there any way to do more? Also is there any way to LEARN more?

Say hello to the endless mode. I was really excited to just see if I could create a level from a 16x16 matrix. That went perfectly and I could make 'infinite' levels via this matrix system. Manually of course.

So I devised a set of rules for generating levels and with some fine tuning I arrived at the final version for this jam. It is VERY VERY basic, and it certainly generates BAD levels.

No problem though you can always ask for a new level or just return to the menu.

Overall Experience

It was an amazing experience. I've learnt a lot considering scope, how quikcly I can make things and I've dipped into a genre a not particularly love and with mechanics I had no idea how to implement.

I've had tons of fun using the tilemap editor and figuring out how to set up proper collisions. It was all a very useful learning experience and at the end I'm pretty happy with the game that came out of this.