Box Gun postmortem

Idea

At first I was really Inspired by David Jaffe old idea "There is a gun… and you hold it.” Didn't help much.

I wanted to make a side-effect of a gun shot(like bullet push force)  more valuable than its killing properties.  Devil May Cry enemies-juggling mechanic connects with it real good. After that, I just needed a proper play space, where I could've explored this. I recently played  1994 Wario Woods, where you interact with falling blocks through Toad running around. Replacing him with a gun seemed fitting enough.

That's how I arrived at Wario Woods with a gun that juggles falling blocks by shooting them.

Spent a lot of time trying to tie all that with "Traffic Jams" theme, but conceded, after imagining a game about controlling the flow of multiple human queues by shooting them.

What went right

This approach of picking ideas from different games and combining them felt good, though I have only the vaguest  understanding of my own process.

The end prototype kinda works, but I don't see a lot of depth hiding in it.

What went wrong

On a 2rd day, core mechanic still didn't work, and I decided that the whole gun idea was no good, because "juggling blocks with shots won't ever feel good, if time is discrete". 

Tried to dive into Unity ECS and make some systemic crowd-control game. After couple of days trying to understand ECS documentation. I finally stopped, in awe of my inability to focus. Returned to the first prototype, barely making time. 

What I learned

Don't change direction completely in the middle of a game jam. It's better to re-examine what got you excited about the previous one, and move it in that direction.