Hey o/
This is a Game Jam Project, for the Acerola Jam 0. You can test the game here
The theme of this Game Jam was 'Aberration'. This is an interesting theme, as it allows far more creativity than a standard theme that is usually used for game jams. The starting point of my reflection was, What did I want to focus on during this jam? I know that it's really difficult to finish a project during this short time, and focusing on a mechanic or a design point can allow me to have something cool at the end.
For this project, the theme inspired me to create something linked to the possibility of visualizing different things in the same space. One way to understand what I wanted to do is to imagine being in two different timespaces at the same time. For example, if I'm at the top of the Eiffel Tower in 2024 and I'm also in the year 1824, I would appear to be floating in 1824, as there is no building at this time. Another example, in the opposite way, is being at the top of the World Trade Center before 2001 and allowing me to float if I'm also in 2005. You can see this idea as viewing the 3D world like planes stacked on top of each other, and one entity being on all of these planes at the same time, which makes it difficult to navigate through one dimension, as there is some obstacle in the other plane.
To be more specific to the game jam, what I had in mind was someone trapped due to a time aberration between two eras. Due to this, they must navigate between these two timespaces, one being before the other. This allows us to have some 3D platformer events, and one dimension's action could influence the other (moving a flowerpot under a canal would allow the flower to grow in the future, for example).
To implement the idea, the solution I came upon was to have one scene where all the elements of the two timespaces were placed. The player would be unable to go forward if there was something in its way in this case. Then, with some shader, only allowing some items to be viewed by the camera. This allows the player to switch between the past and the future to see which action they can do to change the other view and solve the puzzle platformer.
Unfortunately, this is probably not the best way to implement it, as it's quite difficult to follow what is happening on the screen. Maybe I should have changed the way the switch worked? Maybe have the other timespace still visible, but blurry or transparent? This could be improved a lot.
Unfortunately, due to the time limit, the project looks more like a POC without any cool finishing touches. I still like the idea and would love to work on it again later on if I have better ideas about how to implement this. I also need to work on the level design, as I do not have the capacity to make a good level enabling the player to be fully immersed in the game while learning the mechanics.
