This section of the FEED devlog will serve insight into how we came up with the concepts and ideas for FEED.

For those curious: here's a link to our design document. Many of the ideas from that document did not get implemented, but it could be interesting to see our thought process on day 0.

Devlog Format

Since we did not do daily updates of progress on the game, for the devlog I've chosen to highlight specific design choices, mechanics, and systems in the game. Different posts will focus on a specific component of the development of FEED, with this post serving as an overview of the entire experience and an introduction to the game. Some posts will focus on our decision-making process with regards to design, for others to learn from our successes, challenges and mistakes and others will be a tutorial on how to implement certain technical features in Godot.

Game Jam Requirements (What we learned)

Learn You A Game Jam is a beginner-friendly game jam where you're intended to learn a new skill. As the programmer for this project, I had never used a game engine to actually make a game before. I have made several small games in the past, but always by building my own engine. I have some Unity experience for work-related projects as a grad-student but I've never used it for actual game development. I've heard about how great Godot is to use so for this game jam I decided the skill I would learn is how to use Godot for game development. I found Godot to be an absolute joy to use, especially compared to Unity which constantly has seemingly obscure issues. Godot's documentation is great, and while there are not nearly as many tutorials for Godot online, it's design is simple and intuitive enough that I found that I didn't need to rely on tutorials for learning every technique.

Our artist (and my wife) has a lot of art experience, but never done any animation, pixel art or game art in general. So all of these were new experiences for her.

Interpreting and Incorporating theme

The theme was announced to be "Only 1 Inventory Slot". When interpreting this theme, I knew it was important that having only 1 inventory slot is a key part of the challenge of the game and not just something that is inconvenient. I think with only 1 inventory slot it wouldn't be that interesting to have a game that focuses on inventory management explicitly, after bouncing around a couple of ideas I settled on an action-platformer where you can pick up enemies and eat them, but you can only 1 at a time.

Here's the premise we came up with on day 0 in the design document:

"You are a mother bear-type monster with some youngins to feed/protect from the elements. You have to go into treacherous areas (town) and gather resources. Your species has no arms, only legs, and as a result you can only carry things with your mouth (1 inventory slot). "

With this premise there's two different ways you can go in my opinion: 

1. Have a time limit and you have to bring resources from a dangerous area back to your home as quickly as you can, one-at-a-time. 
2. You can only bring 1 item back per level.

The first option could be interesting and fun if it was a hectic, bullet-hell type game, but I really wanted to try and make something with ambiance and atmosphere so we went with option 2. With this option, the choice of item has to be interesting, both the process of retrieving and bringing the item back has to be interesting. 

We went full-force on the idea that you play a cryptid-esque monster/beast and quickly decided that the "item" you bring back every level is a villager who lives in a nearby town and that there would be different villager types with different rewards. Since you're a monster you eat the villagers to survive. After completing the first level the player realizes that you bring villagers back to your cave not just for yourself, but for your babies to feast on (like how a bird hunts and brings food back to the nest).

Challenges In The Game

In FEED there is a hunger bar that depletes a fixed amount after each level (we have a post talking more in detail about our decision-making with the hunger mechanic). If you take too long to beat a level, the hunger bar decreases by an even greater amount. To offset this, the player brings back villagers to be fed to the babies. Different villagers provide different amounts of food, with the greatest villager being the axeman who provides the same amount of food as is depleted BEFORE the time penalty, meaning you break even.

Additionally, during a level there are two kinds of villagers that fight back against you: the aforementioned axeman and the archer. The axeman does 3 damage to the player and the archer does 2. The axeman also has a very high knockback, with the potential of launching the player into undesirable positions.

Mama (The Player Character)

Mama is a large bear-like beast. All movement has a bit of a wind-up, with basic running requiring you to build up speed and jumping/leaping providing a burst of movement after a charge. Mama can attack by using the "chomp" attack. She pounces  forward with a burst of speed and carries the first villager she comes into contact with in her mouth. While carrying a villager, if you press E she will swallow the villager giving you a burst of health instantly, but you can no longer bring that villager back home to complete the level. Also, while carrying a villager you can not kill any other villagers, and instead when you use the chomp attack you just push villagers out of your way.

More details about the design of the characters movement in this post!

Summary and Conclusion

In Feed you play as a monster trying to provide for your nest of babies. Your species only has legs so you have no access to tools etc. and must carry food in your mouth. Every level, you travel to a nearby village and pick out a villager to eat. Combat is simple yet punishing and poor positioning and movement can easily lead to death. However, villagers die immediately upon being attacked and can be swallowed for instant health gain. Different villagers provide different amounts of food. Once you get a hang of the mechanics, it is simple to advance to the end of the game but once you beat it the first time it is revealed that the game also keeps track of how many Baron villagers you eat. In each level there is only 1 Baron and they are placed strategically around the level such that they are the most difficult thing to reach and since there is only one, you can no restore health because if you swallow it you will never be able to get that Baron back. Baron's also give you very little food and in order to beat the game with all Barons you need to beat every level without the penalty timer. This is intended as an alternative "hard mode" for those who are interested in mastering the levels and mechanics of the game. Getting all barons is a real challenge!