Game Jam 2010 - Flimflam Fernandez!

Breakfall won Ottawa Game Jam 2010!!! There was some tough competition, and it was incredibly awesome to see all the other teams in action and watch all sorts of games get built over 48 hours! In one sense, it really is the case that everyone is a winner, because so much cool stuff was made that blew my mind.

Global Game Jam happens in different countries all over the world, with everyone given a common theme and some other criteria, some optional, some mandatory. Everyone was supposed to make a game about "deception", and our time zone was also told to incorporate at least one of the following: rain, spain or a plain.

Coming to the Jam, we had outlined a few goals and ideas for our team. First, as it is permitted by the rules, we brought our own engine. This meant we had some powerful tools we were familiar with, in particular the Marvin level editor. Second, in terms of game design, we were pretty sure we wanted to make a simpler and shorter game, because I think many Game Jam games start to fall apart is a lack of tuning or polish on their content (it's just hard to playtest and balance a game in 48 hours). Finally, as much as we love the look of Marvin's Mittens, it just takes a long time to draw and colour the animations and environments, so the team decided to do things a little differently: we obtained some plasticine, and it turned out that several Breakfallers have previously undiscovered sculpting talent! This ended up being our ace in the hole, as our art was something that got a lot of praise.

So we brainstormed, talked to other teams, hit our head against the wall, fought, ate pizza, and finally - based on a mix of bad jokes and strange ideas - arrived at our game: an asymmetrical multiplayer, turn-based, claymation hide-and-seek simulator. Players take turns jumping around, hiding behind objects, dropping decoys, and generally being sneaky while the other player looks away during their opponent's turn.

The idea is that King Fernandez, the owner of a castle in Spain, is trying to sneak back into said castle during a dark and stormy (and notably, rainy) night. He's been out on the town, philandering with girls in the village, and now he has to get back into bed before he's caught by the Queen. The Queen starts near the bedroom and has only to intercept Fernandez to win. But if the sly King can get past her and get to bed, they go back to the status quo that is their sham of a royal marriage.

It was called "Worms for cowards" by one player, and comparisons to "Where's Waldo" were made. Some people struggled with our controls, which do need some tweaking, but it was incredibly gratifying to see people sit down and actually play the game. There were some really good rounds! People took it seriously, observing (and arguing about) the "no peeking" rule during other people's turns, dropping decoys, and making mad dashes for the royal bedroom. Some people did have the idea of letting the Queen just stake out the bedroom, but because there's ample time for the King to just sprint past her on his turn (and the King can't get caught during his turn, the Queen has to grab him during hers), that strategy didn't really work.

This was a great experience, and several other Breakfallers have mentioned the amazing way in which we were able to work as a team to bring this together. Though everyone there did put forth a spectacular personal effort, the final win really was the team's. Morale is spectacularly high from seeing what we can accomplish when we put our minds to it!

No promises, but there is talk of at some point fixing all the problems we couldn't fix over the weekend and releasing the game on Xbox Live Indie Games. We're more focused on Marvin than ever, but at some point, it would be nice to be able to have Flimflam Fernandez out there for people to play with as well.

Audio and pictures attached!