Esther's Story
Platform: PC (Playable in desktop browser)
My first game jam working in a team of six where I was the sole programmer. The jam had the theme of Big and took place over two weeks in a more relaxed setting so I did an hour or two each evening during the jam. The team very quickly arrived at the idea of playing with scale and a story of a girl trapped in a dollhouse.
I was the one to offer the idea of selecting two objects, one highlighted in red, the other blue, like Portal and have the objects swap their size. I put together a concept quickly using a bounce easing function on the object scales which won the team over and they began to work on puzzles and theming in the game.
The jam was set up to make teams after listing your area of expertise so it was a new challenge to work with people I’ve never met before but it was great working with people from other disciplines and we managed to make something that feels cohesive.
Most notable about Esther’s Story is that the narrator’s lines are fully voice-acted and it includes a cut-scene video for the game’s ending. I had not done any programming with cut-scenes before but with the Video component it was straightforward enough and the art, animation and music folks did a great job!