Table of contents
- Results
- Very brief introduction about myself
- About the LD experience and the game
- What went right & what went wrong
- What I learned & recommendations for future jammers
- Future for Survirus

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Results

My game finished 27th overall! Here are the ratings for all categories.

This was my first game jam ever, so I'm happy with the results in general (specially fun!), and I feel satisfied with the quality of my game :)

It was great seeing streamers figuring out the game mechanics and commenters sharing their moments of thrill and excitement!

Very brief introduction about myself

It is fair to say that my field is kinda related to gamedev. I'm a telecommunications engineer major (think of CS + electrical engineering) so I've had my fair share of programming as a software engineer and app developer (Java, C#, React-Native, Python,Ruby, HTML, CSS, Javascript).

Just like many people here, I grew up playing videogames and they are my #1 passion. My goal and short-term focus as of now is to grow a portfolio of my work and find a studio that shares my view on game development.

About the LD experience and the game

Survirus is an arcade/skill/puzzle game that will test your reaction times and your decision-making ability. You play as a virus living inside a HDD, and your goal is to prevent the computer user from filling it up with their pointless data.

I was lucky to come up with the idea pretty quickly, which allowed me to go deep in regards to gameplay and polish. My plan was to work on core gameplay and mechanics during the first two days, and leave a whole day for visual polish, ingame instructions, and audio.

- First day: I came up with the virus and HDD idea in the first few hours, including the grid gameplay and sector locking/unlocking mechanic. I started coding the procedural grid generator (this allowed me to find the optimal grid size faster) and the data structure to store each sector's status. Towards the end of the day basic movement and the locking mechanic was implemented. All in all, I was very happy to have had come up with a decent idea and actually have made good progress on it.

- Second day: I worked on refining player movement and ironing some kinks out regarding the core mechanic. At this point there was no game loop, pause menu or main menu, which bugged me quite a bit, so I got started on that. To relax my mind a bit and let off some steam, I started working on polishing, since this is something I always enjoy doing. The dome was created, as well as the background grid and the first iteration for the particle systems. I then went back to coding and got in "the zone", which boosted my efficiency quite a bit and I was able to finish out camera smoothing and player movement tweening.

- Third day: Unfortunately I was falling a bit behind schedule, since at this point the main game loop was still not finished. So that's what I did during the morning, and I got it 90% done. It was time to do something else and start looking at finishing the visual aspect of the game and polishing up. No audio present in the game at all up until this moment, so that had to be taken care of too. My brother helped me out with the background music while I worked on the sound effects (BFXR ftw!).

This was the most hectic day of all three. Around 5 hours till deadline now and the main loop is still not finished, same for visual polish and audio. No instructions to speak of and there isthis tricky bug I haven't been able to squash just yet. I doubled down and started hammering at all these things one after another. Although I was mentally exhausted, I was able to get in the zone again and surprised myself at how quick I was at finding out the right way to approach specific issues.

I know I wouldn't have been able to survive this last day without the last previous good nights of sleep.

Twenty minutes till deadline! But the website isn't working! Why did I wait so long to upload something? Is this happening only to me? The site is so buggy the timer says there is 24h till deadline...

Mild panic is settling in.

The website was so sluggish it was impossible to even read the post on technical issues. Fortunately my brain was still lucid enough to turn to twitter for information, and there it was:

"Deadline extended for 24 hours"

Oh...

Oh well this is good. I will be able to submit my game then. On the other hand I had this feeling I had been "cheated on" by this decision, since I organized myself around three days, and busted my ass off for the last 12h to get to the finish line. Obviously this was a tricky feeling caused by exhaustion. It was the right decision seeing as the technical issues looked like they were there to stay for a few hours still, and probably most participants hadn't been able to submit their entries yet.

The thought of going to bed and dealing with this stuff the following day crossed my mind, but I was too excited to stop now, so the only thing I could do was to stay up and work on some very little details that were still bugging me, create "promotional" images and gifs for the ldjam and itch.io pages. Around 5 hours after the original deadline I was able to upload my game, and that's when I went to bed.

I could have kept working on expanding the game the following day till the new deadline, but I wanted to take a rest from all the craze, and I also had some irl stuff to take care of.

What went right & what went wrong

- What went right
  - Found my idea quickly, yay!
  - Managed to get a good amount of visual polish in, and many people commented on that!
  - Managed to organize code properly, which allowed me to quickly test stuff
  - Fun and challenging gameplay that keeps players interested in "just one more game"

- What went wrong
  - Lack of tutorial stage meant people were confused even after reading the instructions
  - Some bug allows the player to stay alive infinitely sometimes
  - Gameplay might be a bit shallow, even if it's challenging

What I learned & recommendations for future jammers

- A lot of people don't read the instructions and jump right into action. Most streamers had to do a double take on them after failing miserably on their first try. A game like this obviously needs a tutorial stage in which every element is introduced one by one, and for the difficulty to ramp up appropriately. Unfortunately it is not possible to do that during a game jam, at least in my opinion (and for a game like this).
- I strengthened my C# knowledge. I decided to do things a bit differently to what I'm comfortable with in regards to data structures, and it paid off. Not only I was able to generate more solid code, but I also learned something new!
- Keep some nice little "tools" handy (shaders, pause menu scripts, camera movement). As an example, pretty much all the effects in Survirus are achieved with a single shader I was working on during the previous week for a different project (you can get this shader for free, see link at the bottom).
- Get enough sleep! This is is fundamental, really. You want a clear head during the whole event, mainly for two reasons:
   - If you don't get enough sleep your brain will get tired, you will become slow and make short-sighted decisions. I have participated in 24h coding marathons in the past, and this definitely happens.
   - Being well-rested gives you the chance to get in "the zone", this mental state in which you are completely focused on your task and you are able to plan ahead and organize very easily. This happened to me during this LD, and it was fantastic. When I entered this state, I was able to see everything clearly, I knew what had to be done at every moment, and I knew how to do it. I was able to keep planning the code structure while I was coding something else.
- You can make a good-looking game with mostly primitive shapes, fancy shaders and basic particle systems.
- Find your idea quickly, this will give you more freedom coming into the second day.
- Keep your scope small, go for procedural content if possible. You will get a better gameplay/content ratio.
- Don't forget to spend some time with your family/friends/SO during the jam! It will help you clear your mind. I went out for dinner with my parents during the first day, found the time to skype with my girlfriend, and still made it!
- For your first game jam, I would recommend doing it alone, you will have a better grasp on all the work needed to make it to the finish line.

Future for Survirus

Survirus will continue development, with both short, and medium/long term goals.

- Short-term: Arcade mobile version, pretty much similar to the existing one, with bugfixes, performance optimizations, more maps layouts, small tweaks, QoL changes, a better interface, tutorial, leaderboards, and maybe a couple new mechanics.

This mobile version will most likely be free to play, with a paid version which will be basically the same thing but with some customization options. Meant as a "support the dev" option.

- Medium/long-term: PC release, with story mode, new gamemodes, boss stages, customization options, co-op and local multiplayer, new maps, VFX & SFX, new music, etc. Might be a paid release ($10-15).

Thank you for reading!

Guillermo

ved.adultlink@gmail.com

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Shader I used for everything in Survirus:
https://github.com/AdultLink/TexturePanner

Don't forget to check all my other cool free shaders:
https://github.com/AdultLink/

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