During my many years of casual development I've made a number of different small games, some designed to be a test of concepts, some designed to be fun games in their own right. One of the projects I worked on by myself was titled 'Jellybean Robot Golf' and was made as my entry into a small game jam that used the theme 'Candy.'

When I first found out what the random topic the first thoughts that came to my head were of Match-3 games and games about eating sweets. But I wanted to bring something unique to the table so I decided to make a golf game!

I started by trying to get the core gameplay down- The ability to flick the jellybean about the table with a basic course. At this point in the jam I was still feeling out the idea and with a limited amount of time to develop the game it is imperative to test the core concept to ensure its fun before development time is wasted on something that is going nowhere.

After testing it out and finding interest in the way the jellybean moves in comparison to a ball, I accepted the idea and began work on some of the static components of the game that would remain the same- This is where the robot comes in!

The goal: Feed the jellybean to the robot. Your tools: You can flick, tap and roll the jellybean around the obstacle course to complete your goal. 

As a requirement of the Jam was that no premade assets were allowed I started with a rough robot head as the goal posts but at this stage my main focus was introducing the tabletop to give scale to the entire thing. At this point it acts as an 'out of bounds' section, but I later change it to act more like the rough. 

For this project rather than sourcing my own photographs of material surfaces I decided to fabricate them in Photoshop, as can be seen with the wood texture. The modelling and UV mapping of all objects was done in 3dsMax.

With the basic setup of movement, goal and playing field done I felt it was time to change up the type of course we were dealing with- Given it was a tabletop I felt it was only appropriate to populate it with dishes, food and, because of the theme, candy!

Part of the challenge you face when having to keep up with a game jam is deciding if you should put a lot of work into assets when they're first made, or if you should come back and tidy them up later. Here, as I begin adding food and chinaware I focus on nailing the material properties on my first pass- The specularity on the lollipop sells that its a hard sweet more than any texture can, without needing as much work.

By now, with the gameplay proven and a basic level designed I felt the need to increase the variety of obstacles, platforms and designs available to me to make more levels; The second level I designed here coming with a bouncy jelly, a cupcake and water traps- Glasses of milk and juice. As mentioned before, the material properties can help sell effects; The jelly, while having no diffuse texture, has a normal texture which, without having time to write a class to manipulate the jelly's vertices, does the next best thing in being convincing. 

With those in play I used my existing chinaware to produce a different type of gameplay, focused more on keeping out of the rough than necessarily getting to the goal as quickly as possible. 

With the 72 hour deadline drawing near I had to prioritise what was important to make the game playable. Here I introduced a main menu and threw together a number of levels- To hopefully add visual interest to the main menu I used periodic functions at different scales to give a smooth camera orbit that didn't repeat, but made regular sweeping motions around the focal objects.

One of the last things I did was making simple logic to make sure the game progresses when a level is complete. Sadly, the robot head didn't have time for a beauty pass and remained as it was. With the main menu and level select functioning, and short collection of levels I zipped it all up and sent it on its way.

This game, while simple in style and concept taught me a lot about time management. While scope-creep is always something to watch out for, I learned that often you can make do with what you have- Objects can be resized and reused in different ways for entirely different purposes; Frosting for a cupcake can become a whipped cream mountain with a texture and context change.