Game-a-Week is an intensive program in which participants will create 6 prototype games — one game each week. The aim of this program is to get comfortable with the practice of rapid prototyping: working quickly to create a small playable game that effectively proves or disproves a design concept. Additionally, by working on small projects with low stakes, we can open ourselves up more readily to feedback. Drawing influence from game jams, the program will prompt you with weekly thematic, aesthetic, or mechanical constraints (e.g. “time” or “black-and-white” or “one-button input”).
The celestial dead calls. Planet Nahboris lays slain. Red Nahboris who spits fire and carries rust on its winds.
Your body is damaged. The implants that once outclassed your flesh are shattered. Your vision is failing.
Theme #1 for 2025 Game-A-Week was "One screen". Very open to interpretation, some of my brainstorm ideas included:
- A game in which as you take damage your screen is physically destroyed. One screen, one life. I loved the concept of creating dead pixels, or at worst, bringing a hammer to the monitor, to physically demonstrate player health. Extremely wasteful.
- Similarly, a game in which your screen gets smaller as you take damage, gradually limiting your play area.
- Running a game on the most obscure, obtuse screen I could find. We discussed ATMs, IMAX screens, microwaves.
I was mulling over how I could twist the prompt wording, to subvert expectation through word play. I wondered about alternatives to "screen", both in noun and verb, but it ended up being a "mishearing" of the prompt which inspired the concept.
My raw "design notes" for this project are as below:
- one screen - “once green”
- humans got too addicted to maximalist technology, and ruined the face of the earth
- explore a barren wasteland as your helmet HUD begins to slowly fail, glitching and overstimulating, trying to fit too much on one screen - “extreme body modifications, dangerous implants, and more interfaces than should fit on one screen. there was no end in sight.”
I have been looking for an excuse to pick up Godot for a while. Previously, my only game engine experience has been with Game Maker Studio, and I wanted to pull away from that for a number of reasons (super loose code styling, no native 3d support). I found picking it up way easier than I had initially expected.
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Juiced Up First Person Character Controller Tutorial - Godot 3D FPS by LegionGames
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Lava Erupting From the Crater of a Volcano · Free Stock Video
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Fire Videos, Download The BEST Free 4k Stock Video Footage & Fire HD Video Clips
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fern plant by Geoffrey Bell [CC-BY] via Poly Pizza
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Grass by Quaternius
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Planet by Quaternius
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weathered rock pack - rock_weathered_10.png | OpenGameArt.org
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rusted metal texture pack - metall001-new-tileable.png | OpenGameArt.org
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Ambient Mountain, River, Wind and Forest and Waterfall | OpenGameArt.org
