Reflecting on the game's development

The jam’s theme was “together.”

The initial idea for the game was the 2D layout of seeing the planet and a satellite orbiting it, with two players separately controlling them, with the task of bouncing signals between them. In this phase a piece of trivia was shared that the pictures that astrophysicists took of black holes in 2019 and 2022 required similar technologies.

Due to the simplicity of the concept we managed to create a prototype very quickly. At this point the only gameplay challenge was timing: the satellite orbited with a steady pace, and both players had to time the sending of the signals. This created the first interesting asymmetry: the player controlling the planet faced more challenge, as they had to factor in the travel time of the satellite and sending the signal tiny bit earlier, while the player controlling the satellite only had to send the signal when they were directly over given tower.

The prototype was sufficiently fun, and we set out to layer in some more mechanics. Typing was one such idea, and it turned out to be very easy to implement. Some more ideas were floated about how it could be merged with the timing mechanic, but we decided that typing was challenging and fun alone, and the sending should be automated.

With one side of the multiplayer getting more complex we felt that the satellite’s player had very little to do. Adding a mini-inventory and the colour-matching mechanic felt good in testing. It also allowed the planet’s player to ready more automated signals at once, making the game’s pacing faster.

With this our gameplay loop was complete, and we focused on polishing. This meant adding some sound effects for game feel, implementing a narrative system, and finally wrapping the package in some menus.

Thanks to the very limited scope we were able to progress steadily throughout the 48 hours, without overwork. The last few hours of the jam needed stricter pace, but it did not lead to crunch or any scope cuts.

Probably all of us could find some aspects that we wished we were able to spend some more time polishing (which is certainly what happens with most development processes), but it is safe to say that we are satisfied with our finished game.