Brighton Global Game Jam 2022 - "Crossing Party Lines"

This project represents a submission to the Brighton Global Game Jam 2022. The challenge consists of a 48 hour sprint in which to build a game corresponding to a predefined theme, and optionally use one or more diversifiers to either introduce additional challenge to the development process or to provide inspiration and structure for game assets and mechanics.

The theme of this game jam was "duality".

Background to our game idea

A duality is a situation in which two opposite ideas or feelings exist at the same time. Source

With the theme now known, our team quickly got to work thinking of situations that represent duality - that represent two opposed ideas. For the UK-based members of our team, this immediately brought to mind an ongoing political spat, Partygate, in which the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, has drawn intense criticism for allegedly partaking in parties and other social events whilst these things were forbidden under lockdown restrictions, the very same lockdown restrictions he himself would have contributed towards.

This, to us, embodied the theme of duality well. With that in mind, we decided to make a tongue-in-cheek, satirical experience based around this scandal, in which you play as Boris Johnson. To further embrace the theme of duality, we loved the idea of splitting the game into two distinct 'modes', and that the player's actions in one mode would have direct consequences on the other.

Early / Shelved Ideas

• A game with the screen literally 'dual'/split in half, where input commands would effect both 'screens'/minigames, and optimum gameplay in one minigame may negatively impact the other.
  • This wouldn't have been possible with the practical technical limitations of wasm4 (160x160 pixel screen) and so was shelved.
• A game more heavily embracing the 'retro' game theme by including gameplay similar to Pokemon, insofar as presenting a 'fighting' experience with set numbers of moves.
  • Considered too complex to complete in the allocated time-frame.
  • Also only had a loose connection to the theme of "duality".

Technical details

TODO:

• detail technical stack
• detail Zig
• detail wasm4

Other To-Dos

• Add screenshots of game
• Add download method/play in browser (itch.io?)
• Include some samples of sprites?
• Include audio samples?
• Include team breakdown/attribution?