Frost in the Desert

• Game Jam Theme: Transient
• Team Size: 3 members
• Engine: Unreal Engine 4
• Development Time: 24 Hours
• Game Mode: Single-player

• Concept & documentation
• Systems design (mechanics)
• Programming (gameplay)
• Title art
• Production

Overview

Frost in the Desert was made in Unreal during a 24-hour game jam with a team of three. The theme of this Jam was "Transient", which we chose to represent with a melting snowman. You must race across the desert jumping from platform to platform before you melt. Along the way you can pick up ice cream cones that slow down the melting process, but you'll have to find the ice cream truck if you want to survive. As you melt, you shrink allowing you to jump higher and fit into smaller spaces. This empowers the player as they are strongest right before they lose.

My Role

I was the systems designer and sole programmer on the project. I designed and implemented all of the mechanics and systems that you see in the game. In Frost, I wanted the players to experience a sense of urgency as they raced against the clock. To achieve this, I made your snowman shrink as he lost health, and added sweat drops to snow that you were melting in the hot desert sun. To guide players in the level, I created ice cream cones that act as health packs and to act as guides to prevent blind 'leaps of faith'.

While making Frost, I had to overcome the problem of teaching players how to play the game without a tutorial or UI. This was a challenge because I needed to tell players that they had an invisible timer and they needed to hurry through the level. I overcame this problem by implementing the melting mechanic that showed your snowman melting in the heat. When combined with the shrinking mechanic, it became clear that you would die if you remained out in the desert too long. This gave me a great opportunity to show that the Ice Cream cones were powerups by having them stop you from melting and adding a temporary shield to your health. Once a player learned the Ice Cream was beneficial, I could use them to affect the gameplay flow by providing many to make players feel safe, or increase tension by keeping them sparse.

• The Team:
• Systems design, programming, & production - Kevin Langendoen
• Art & textures - Miguel Gallardo
• Level design - Chris Brettman

• Git Hub Repo - https://github.com/Shakarax/Transient