Stranded - WGJ 189

Hey Everyone!

This is a VERY small puzzle game developed in about 4 days for the Weekly Game Jam #189:

https://itch.io/jam/weekly-game-jam-189

In Stranded, you take control of a survivor trapped on a barren island. However, after taking in their surroundings, they realize this island is more than it seems. Can you uncover the secret of the island?

This project had 2 main goals:

1. I wanted to test out a few concepts I've had in the back of my head. Specifically, a puzzle mechanic in the same vain as the Silent Hill or Resident Evil puzzles. One's that deal with multiple mechanics that need to each be correctly solved for the game to progress. I always loved the hint system in the Silent Hill franchise (specifically 2) where the game would tell the player what felt like useless information/ poetry that ended up being the key to solving the puzzle.

I also work on a, now scrapped, concept of the player controlling the camera's rotation, with the player's rotation/ controls matching said rotation. I ran into an issue where the player would not change direction, and I ultimately decided to scrap the concept as this is a short game jam, and I can always return to the concept at a later date.

2. I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the actual process of "finishing" a game. My last finished project was almost two years ago (May 2019). That isn't to say I haven't worked on anything. As is the case with all game designers, there are at least a dozen incomplete projects sitting in my hard drive where I have either lost interest/ faith in the project, or the scope grew so overwhelming I had no clue how to finish it.

This was a nice return to form. I refined what I was already familiar with (event systems, UI, basic player controls), relearned a few concepts that I had forgotten over the years (controller support), and even learned new concepts (webGL/ making games playable on a browser is something I've never done before!).

Overall, this was a really fun jam that helped reassure my skills as a programmer/ level designer/ game designer, and I definitely plan on doing more game jams in the future.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy Stranded!