Game in one hour: CardJump

Developing a Card based Platformer Game

This weekend I participated again in the one-hour-game-jam, and created: CardJump, the card based platformer.

The theme of the jam was running, and I thought about developing a runner game where your actions are decided by cards.

Development process

When this idea came to me, I felt that it actually was a horrible idea. I felt that it's not going to work, that it's not going to be fun to play, and that it's not achievable in one hour. On the other hand I felt that it would be fun to try - that it could be a failure I will be proud to have for a one-hour-game-jam. After all, when else can I give such a crazy idea a shot if not in an 1-hour-jam?

In this video you can see my process while making this game in Unity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHR1IfU-Rc0

Results and conclusions

So, surprisingly I made it, surprisingly it's kind of fun. But I can see some issues with this game style: it's very hard to balance, and it becomes a bit too chaotic.

You might notice that the art took as much time as programming for this project. I learned how to use unity's new cinemachine 2d camera.

The project files are accessible as usual in github: https://github.com/idoadler/1hgj/releases/tag/1HGJ.211

I'm glad I made it, now I have new tools in my game design arsenal, and perhaps I'll come back to this idea one day.

Thoughts on how to develop this idea further:

• Deck building!
  • Different weapons for different scenarios
  • Different loading times for different cards
• Make it an endless runner instead of a platformer
• Make a pipe-dreams style game, where you put the card on the surface

Previous games

If you want to check my previous one-hour games (all of them open source) you can check my itch.io account, or check my other posts:

• tile based maze: I'm late
• 2.5D aquarium game: Feedy Fishy
• Find the correct icon games: Wires and Letters
• and: more