Just a Slime - Game Jam Analysis

Circa February 1st, 2021 - Written September 18th, 2026

Welp. Everyone's gotta start somewhere...
Back in the ancient year of... 2021, a couple of my buddies and I got together to do a game jam - the Finally Finish Something 2021 game jam... 4 days before the deadline... lol

Park and Tony were mainly responsible for the programming and game design, while I was mostly responsible for art assets, animations, music, etc. We were on an EXTREMELY short timeline for people that had never made a game in Unity 2D before, and I was working full-time at the time, but I learned more in those 4 days than I had learned from watching YouTube tutorials for fun.
To be fair, I'd used Unity 3D for a tank game I was working on with some friends, but I had only really done anything in the modeling, animation, sprites, etc kinda context, so this was a whole new can of worms for me.

Ironically, most of the time I spent was on the animator system, sprite and animations for the slime, with a bit of time spent on the music. We actually ended up using an asset pack for the background, tiles, bird and whatnot, just recoloured to a more interesting palette to make it stand out.

My only regret with this game is that I didn't get more involved in the programming side of things. I was pretty comfortable and in my element from what I recall, aside from the Unity animator system. That whole experience really opened my eyes to the power of the animator system, which I haven't really dived into for a game I'd release until much more recently. The basic status/flow items in the animator feature worked great for something like the slime, and I ended up using the same system for every single project I made since then. More recently I've gotten into using layers with 3D models, and THAT is a game changer for making smooth animations!
From a game design point of view, I think the mechanic where you have to charge up your jump as the slime was smart, but not revolutionary. We probably should have made it a bit faster to charge up given the imminent threat of the bird following you. That, or we should've made the bird move a bit slower, or in a more scripted manner. We could've done a lot better of a job at ramping up the difficulty, since this thing is basically impossible to beat.

All in, not a super exciting game, but then again, I don't think anyone's first finished game is, it just has to get finished. I'm proud that Park and Tony were able to get this one finished with me all those years ago, and the path it set me on going forward.

If you wanna see some history, check out the game's Itch.io page.