My game jam is officially over! I did this specific jam last year and switched from writer to artist. I made most everything you see in the screen captured content including the UI menus, monsters, environment, VFX, and collectible trash. This post is about reflections on the jam!
The video game we made is an auto-battler/team builder for a revival of Skremplets, a game of battling gross trash monsters in miniature form using holographic cards that is notorious for no one knowing how to play it. The player Em is in a Skremplets competition seeing how will be number one.
The game’s art most closely resembles a Nickelodeon-like style with similarities to shows to “Aaah, Real Monsters,” “Rocko’s Modern Life,” “Rugrats,” and “SpongeBob.”
The overworld and Skremplet monster art style is simple, quirky curved and bent shapes, scribbled aesthetics, simplified and vibrant backgrounds, and uneven, wobbly lines in a deliberately offbeat gross look. Even the star shimmer animation I made embodies a gross quirky look.
Art for indie games is about making the actual art, but also animations, managing digital assets, project management, team collaboration, and strategic planning. I had to work with the sound designers/musician to coordinate audio during each screen the player sees; offer suggestions on voice acting based on character design; and plan for necessary art vs polish assets.
I worked with a lot of new people, especially our writer, very closely. Not all jams are made to encourage other devs to talk shop or give comments on how to make the game/app better. I appreciated when I could give the new jammers (this was their first game jam) encouragement after the game was done because we didn’t see a lot of developer-to-developer feedback.