Out of Thyme

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An arcade game made for the weekend-long Mini Jame Gam #20 made in Godot. The theme was out of time and must include the special object, an organ (the musical instrument). Out of 47 entries Out of Thyme was ranked 2nd overall, and was the highest ranking solo entry.

Make sure to play the game or read about my development process in the post-mortem.

The Tools

Here are the tools I chose to develop with:

  • Godot 4 (game engine, coding)
  • Krita (art)
  • Audacity (sound editing)
  • Aseprite (when didn't know how to do something in Krita)
  • FL Studio (when I didn't know how to do something in Audacity)

The Process

I woke up around 7 on Friday and immediately checked the theme: out of time. In addition to the theme, a special item had to be incorporated: organ (the instrument). I had no ideas, so the first step was brainstorming.

Within a couple hours, I was actively sketching out game concepts with several friends. There were several good ideas, but the ones i resonated with most were action arcade games.

Someone came up with the idea to use "running out of thyme" as a pun. This directed my attention first to farming, and then to a "thyme defender" arcade game.

The final concept I ran with was a thyme delivery game where you defend your thyme from hungry birds by playing an organ. The final game stayed very true to my sketches.

The next order of business was art. One of my goals for this jam was to make a game without pixel art, since that would stretch me out of my comfort zone.

I started by drawing a mockup of what I thought a screenshot of the game might look like. This gave me a sense of scale, framing, and color.

On to the implementation. I quickly dropped my sketches in and got the player moving around before adding train car collisions. After implementing the scrolling ground, it finally felt like the game was coming together.

Day 2 was a blur of coding, animating, and debugging. Despite it's punishing difficulty and unpolished sprites, the game was playable!

Day 3 was all about polish: adding outlines to sprites, making the sky change color, adding sound effects, adding instructions, high scores, etc.

I submitted my entry 1 minute and 48 seconds before the deadline. I worked ~40 hours in 3 days and drank lots of coffee. After hitting "submit," there was a huge feeling of accomplishment that overcame me. I got to relax, play other submissions, and debrief with my friends about our experience. It wasn't long before we starting talking about the next game jam...once we had all mentally & physically recovered, that is.

The Results

I feel proud of what I accomplished. Even though it is a small arcade game, I was able to polish it more than previous entries. The game mechanics made sense, were easy to learn, and hard to master. I included hints to help out new players and easily-readable animations when something important happens. The UI was tabbable so you don't need to touch a mouse and break your rhythm. The win screen is animated and interesting...but so is the lose screen (which players might see more often!).

Even though these seem like obvious additions in retrospect, it's difficult to prioritize the "smaller" items that make a game feel intuitive when under a time crunch. I am happy with what I was able to accomplish...and the 2st place ranking was nice too!

Feel free to play the game for yourself and let me know what you think!