TRAIN JAM 2017
300+ game developers and artists get on the train and are split up into small teams. Teams have 52 hours to make a game around the given theme before the train arrives in SF. The week after you arrive is the Game Developers Conference, where all the games made are played by attendees of the conference.
Train Jam is a 52-hour game jam on a train from Chicago to
San Francisco. I served as a game designer and main artist on this project.
Game theme
The game theme was Unexpected Anticipation. We had a potential delay due to snow in the Rockies at the beginning of our trip, and that topic of the unknown made it into every teams' game.
The scenery
There's no internet on the train. So when faced with a problem, you can’t just Google it! You’re forced to reach out to the people around you. A hidden benefit is that without WiFi you only have the breathtaking views to distract you from making your game.
Tough Spudder is an endless runner platformer where you choose your next level in a risk/reward fashion. If your potato is damaged, the potato’s skin is removed. One more hit after being skinned, and it's Game Over! You may gain a new layer of skin by replaying the level that skinned you. The goal is to get the highest score.
Main menu title screen for the game, featuring charact art and the logo I designed.
Some Screengrabs from the game
Level and game design
Once we decided on the genre for our game, the next step was deciding on the ‘fun’. We decided that it would be interesting to combine a classic runner game with a decision making element. The user would have to decide between a level they could 'see' and a mystery level.
Another element of the game design was designing the 'enemy' elements. I worked with the team to decide on what elements our potato friend would have to face. Then we worked together to weight the elements and make sure each level’s design was both challenging and beatable.
Sprite and world design
As main artist, I developed the look and feel of our game. I went with a pixel art style to achieve the classic adventure game feel. A huge portion of my work in the project time frame was developing the world art, character design and animation, and element design and animation, shown here.
