Global Gamejam 2022
Year: 2022
Duration: 3 days
Team size: 5
Role: Level and narrative designer
Description: In this game you switch between vastly different worlds, where in one the people you meet are kind and friendly, and would like to trade with you. However, these same people will turn into your worst nightmare in the other world, where they will start attacking you in battle, with guns and blades. Tread carefully, and be aware of the world you’re in.
Game link: https://v3.globalgamejam.org/2022/games/heaven-nor-hell-0
Ideation
The theme for this years Global Game Jam was Duality. With this theme, we came to the concept of switching between two states of reality: Heaven and Hell.
Unlike the typical Heaven and Hell, the hostility of these places were reversed. In the Hell state, the player could talk to different NPC’s, learn their backstory and shop for items with the coins they’d gathered thoughout the map.
In the Heaven state, those same NPC’s would turn into angels that attack the player on sight in a bullet hell-like state. To incentivize the player to switch states, we created obstacles that required switching to the Heaven state.
Contribution
I was in charge of the level and narrative design for this jam.
The level design consisted of seperate rooms the camera would snap between, keeping it visually clear for the bullet hell state. In the schematic on the right, you can clearly see where each obstacle, npc/enemy and coins are located.
– Blue/Red : Water (surpassable, heaven state)/ Lava (insurpassable, hell state)
– Green/purple : Enemies (heaven)/ NPC’s (hell)
– Yellow : Coins
The narrative was kept relatively simple for this game jam, consisting of mostly one-liners. The most important idea the dialogue had to convey was that the demons were non-hostile and just trying to live their cozy life in hell.
Take aways
Participating in a game jam was something I had never done before, but it was a welcome breath of fresh air. Having such a short time constraint forces you to take shortcuts on things you would’ve otherwise spent weeks on perfecting. It also enables you to think outside the box and just go crazy with your ideas. If it doesn’t work it, it’s no big deal, it was only a few days of work afterall.