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.
My submission received an honourable mention from the judges.
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.
DESIGN THOUGHTS
Working within limits is often preferable
Immediately I knew that my limited time would also limit the size of the map I would be able to make. So I aimed for around 10 minutes of gameplay with distinct areas that the player has to solve before proceeding. This way there is never too much searching or backtracking that can turn into frustration. I also wanted the end to loop back to the beginning again so we close the bag nicely.
Readability was also high on the list of what I wanted to achieve. The player should always know what to do, in my case that was mostly closing the circuit and activating something. I do admit that I don’t fully reach my goal here and would have benefited from some more time and playtesting. I should have planned for the goal off the section to be very clear or visible from the start. Or I could have done some cheating and simply moved the camera to show the goal with a sequencer.
Another goal I set for myself early with this level was that it should look “fun”. I wanted to emulate the feeling you get from looking at a Jak & Daxter level, where you simply want to that next thing in the distance because it looks fun and exciting. This would often mean creating objects where the player inherently knows what to do and simply wants to get there.
(e.g. a ramp in a racing game)
Post mortem
What did I learn?
What went well?
I am proud of what I achieved with this submission and mostly due to the context of only having four days to do it. I sat a minimum of 16 hours a day just to get it done in time.
The strong suits of the level is the electricity, how the level neatly loops around several times and how the level looks.
The electricity was just the right amount of complicated mechanic that I had time to make but that fit right into the theme, assets and platforming in general.
The looping made the level feel thought out and also gives the player a nice sense of progression when a previously closed area is now open.
The look of the level is a personal achievement for me since I usually struggle with environment art. But this time I feel like I really improved and I’m very pleased with the result.
What can I Improve?
The most obvious answer here and like how it is with most projects, it’s planning and playtesting. But with the constraints that I had with this project it was hard to achieve, but it could still have been better.
Next up is the electricity mechanic. While I do like it as a whole, it wasn’t implemented or iterated on nearly enough or in the best of ways. It should have been used more, should have introduced new levels to the mechanic gradually and involved other aspects of the level. This is what I feel is the biggest issue with the level overall makes it lose a feeling of cohesion.
The narrative will often take a back seat when time is short and I never really had a plan in mind for what the goal of the level should be or why our little robot is doing what he does. This could also have improved the level a lot by simply stating out the goals, even in plain text and then perhaps showing the consequences of what has gone wrong. This could have been things like the level losing power over all, wind turbines not rotating, lights are off and stuff is simply not working or standing still. Once we resolve the issue everything could start working or moving again, partially as we go or all at once.
There is of course much more that could be improved, but I feel like these three are the main points.