Blood Engine

I had recently had an interview to work on an FMV game, which led me to research the tools commonly used in FMV and adventure style games. I am capable of making a graph system from scratch, like for the AI in Neon Overflow, but using a premade tool is great for speedy development of a prototype, so I decided to use the game jam as on opportunity to learn how to use the Adventure Creator Toolkit for Unity.

I used to write horror fiction, so I had a few horror stories floating around in my head that I hadn’t used. I chose to make a game based on a ship that requires water for fuel, but an accident results in all the water being lost, leaving the water in the crew’s bodies as the only viable fuel source. Every jump has a high mortal cost, and it is uncertain whether it will work, or how much is enough. In the end, it is a leap of faith. To progress, the player must Risk It for The Biscuit.

In a game jam it is very helpful if the game can run in-browser through WebGL. I thought if the game is going to be played in a browser window, why not take advantage of that and do something that can only work if played in a browser window.

A stand-out feature of Blood Engine is how the game spills out of its bounds and onto the webpage itself. I achieved this by making the game window unusually wide (1900 x 600), set up the game so that it looked like it was in an 800 x 600 window, blended the edges of the game to match the itch.io page, and hacked the CSS on the page to make it behave like the game is 800 x 600.

This feature was used a few different ways in Blood Engine. At first it allowed the player to look outside of the game’s bounds, which parallels the idea of being trapped on a ship and looking out. It was then later used for the cosmic horror aspects of the game, and then finally the player leaping out of the game and into the void.

Blood Engine was my most successful game jam entry. It ranked 40th out of 2,300 entries, and also ranked #13 for Audio, #36 for Enjoyment, and #63 for Innovation.

It also ranked high for Visuals, Gameplay, & Theme, all within the top 5-15%. High as they are, they can probably be improved. With more time I can improve the visuals, and gameplay can be improved by adding more puzzle elements to the game. I feel the game’s theme worked well for Risk It For The Biscuit, though this game jam became very “biscuity” so I think many people took the theme a bit literally.