MY FIRST GAME JAM
Electr ‘O’ Bot is my submission to the 2025 Stack ‘O’ Jam. A week long jam that I started three days late. Some say I started late due to the BF6 open beta, but truth is I simply didn’t find out about it before that. Shoutout to my homie Eliott who gave me the tip and Isak for his invaluable feedback.
I’ll reserve this place in case I win any prize otherwise I’ll fill it with some mumbo jumbo.
ELECTRICITY
bzzzzzzzzzzt
One of the main criteria for the jam was that the gameplay had to exceed that of the sample we were given. Due to my limited time I went with something that took advantage of the games grab mechanic as well as all the other gameplay pieces such as fans, cogs, lights and moving platforms.
Through the use of some interfaces and event dispatchers I got all the different parts to talk to each other smoothly and set to work creating some puzzles that would tie in nicely with the level design.
Level overview
top down
GAME JUICE
I would drink it.
“GIVE IT SOME OOMPH!”
One of my favorite things about Unreal Engine is that I can through blueprints create the mechanics of the game without any deep knowledge of programming. I can also give simple things like doors that “game juice” that actually makes it feel good to open that door. By adding things like camera shake, cool animations, sounds, and effects. Below are some examples of me doing this in our game.
Right click to pan and Ctrl + Mousewheel to scroll
“MAKE IT NICE TO USE”
As soon as I realize that I will need to reuse or modify a blueprint several times I take the time to make it easy to do so. This was especially important in this game project since it wouldn’t just be me placing and configuring actors, but our artists as well. Below is an example of a lamp in the game that first is driven by an enumerator so that its different modes can easily be selected. Then there are other settings that relate to that mode, as previewed in the video. Creating clean and customizable blueprints like this to improve my iteration speed and quality is something I often do and enjoy doing as well!