PRODUCTION
I designed and developed 20XX alone in about five days for GBJAM4, a game jam based around making Gameboy-themed games.
The game was made using Clickteam Fusion.
THE GAME
20XX is a platformer focused mainly on boss battle. The player has a constantly decreasing health that can be regenerated by killing enemies. It is also possible to trade big chunks of health to convert enemies into weapons.
DESIGNER'S COMMENTARY
Let's get it out of the way... 20XX doesn't really work. My original idea was having the player haunted by a constantly decreasing health-resource and continuously making them choose between "investing" in enemies (gaining secondary weapon upon kill) or just killing enemies (gaining health back). The problem with this became that the secondary weapons ended up not being particularly useful, therefore breaking the whole system from start.
There is to be noted that I made this game in four or five days for a game jam, if I had more time I'd probably have gone back and worked more on the design, mainly trying to get a more Castlevania-like, slow and deliberate feel to the gameplay. I reckon that the main reason why the secondary weapons don't work (aside from generally being a bit thrown together at the last minute, they would have to be generally re-designed anyway) is because the basic controls have a very "wide" and twitchy feel to them, which makes the “regular” attack almost always the most flexible option to approach any of the enemies in the game.
The one thing that I think works in 20XX are the weird and otherworldly aesthetics, which seems to successfully get the "wtf" i wanted from players. Although even then I think they would be far more impactful if paired with a slower and more thoughtful gameplay.
