M.C.G.U.F.F.I.N
M.C.G.U.F.F.I.N is a 3rd Person Action Arena Fight where the player has to stop B.O.S.S the mad scientist from launching a nuke called the M.C.G.U.F.F.I.N
Primary Role: Game Designer
Secondary Role: Project Manager
Team Size: 6
Time frame: 9 Days (Game Jam)
Engine: Blueprints, Unreal 5
Theme: Unstable
DESIGN CHALLENGE- BOSS AI & COMBAT
Designing a Boss fight for a jam is not easy, nor is it recommended. That's mostly due to scope and game feel needed more than 9 days to refine and polish.
So the challenge going into this jam was how can we make the Core Loop simple and small enough so that the team isn't rushing and stressing out too much at the end of the jam.
B.O.S.S is a mad scientist about to launch a nuke, and you as the player need to stop him from launching the reality bending nuke; so the player has to run into the lair and home ground of the scientist.
We needed the player to feel like they're at a disadvantage and that the boss has all the cards to play with his inventions and defense systems.
For a boss to be interesting, it needs to feel rewarding and tell a story in some sense right?
So what I came up with are attacks sets that tests the player's awareness and dodging, bombs dropped by drones, and tracking lasers.
B.O.S.S AI Tree
We still needed to add some player agency into this fight, aka, the reward for dodging what is essentially a bullet hell. We decided to make that our win condition.
A.N.N.I.H.A.L.A.T.I.O.N is a move that the boss uses after about 2-3 cycles of tracking lazers and bomb drops. It's an attack that results in the defense systems overclocking and frying; exposing what is essentially one of four batteries (energy cores) that power the reality bending nuke.
Player Attacking The Energy Core
So what we ended up with was 2 basic enemy attacks that fit a mad scientist by using environmental hazards; as well as a big attack that causes the boss' defense system to overload (also goes along with the Unstable theme) and expose the win condition as the reward.
The result...? Well, let's just say that even with what was on paper a small core loop proved some trouble to the programmers.
POST-MORTEM
The result: An unfinished project
Production issues regardless, I needed to understand that Combat in 9 days was inherently high-risk. As production needed to go perfect for it to even stand a chance of making it out finished.
The lesson here isn't to not do combat for game jams however, from a Game Design perspective, attacks could've been simpler programmatically and enhanced by feedback and reward. A boss fight can be simple and rewarding, after all it's just a test of the player's skill, a wall to climb before they can move on.
As of writing this; the team and I plan to continue with this project for a little longer, finishing the last 20% of the game, and making the boss' attacks feel coherent before we expand.
A lesson I'm definitely taking away from this was to scope for half maybe at most 2/3rds of the given Jam length. And come up with contingencies knowing that the genre is volatile in a jam setting as well.