Time for another GBA Gamejam! This time it is the winter jam, its the smaller of the annual GBA Gamejams. We had 1 month to make something little, this time the Title Screen.
Wow. I almost feel called out. The Title Screen is usually the last thing I think of and sometimes skip entirely.
A whole month. I could make a pretty popping title screen in that time.
So I set to work brainstorming and settled on the idea to make a really vibrant cafe scene. It wouldn't be interactive, but you could sit and people watch.
One of the first things I like to do when I start making a new game is to focus on colour. I wanted to set a vibe for my cafe that was chill, but also fun and upbeat.
I settled on Fading-16 as a starting point, here is an example using it from lospec...
I spent a few days building out a background I could use for the game.
What you see above is just the stuff that wasns't animated though. I had tons of ideas of what I could include to really liven the place up.
- People (obviously)
- A cat
- Pigeons pecking outside
- A clock
- A reflection on the glass
- Steam from the coffee machine
I also found some great music and background chatter that I could use to really liven the place up.
After quite a bit of work I had something working that I was really proud of.
But with still nearly 2 weeks of the jame to go I decided that I could try to add more.
In fact I had already planned for this a little, I added queuing and coded customers in such a way that I could spawn them at will and have no 2 customers with the same sprites on the screen together.
Ideally I wanted to turn it into a full on sim, but I held myself from biting off more than I could chew and went down the route of turning it into a small idle game instead.
Each customer would bring in more money that you could then spend on upgrading the cafe. A little plant here or there or wifi for example to attract new customers.
It was hard trying to figure out a good length and to be honest I still think it is probably a little long for the amount of content in it.
It is over on itch.io now if you want to check it out.