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Prom: Paradise and Pandemonium

Prom: Paradise and Pandemonium is a game created for the 72-hour Texas Game Jam. The theme of this year's (2024) jam was "it takes two to tango".

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Awarded Best Use of Theme, Judges Choice, and Runner-up for Best Overall.

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Details:

  • My role: Gameplay Programmer and Game Designer

  • Team size: 10

    • 2x Programmers/Designers​

    • Tech Artist

    • Musician

    • 3D Artist

    • 4x 2D Artists

    • Producer

  • Dev time: 72 hours

  • Contribution: 

    • Mechanics Design

    • Game Design

    • Gameplay Programming

Made with: 

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Premise

In Prom: Paradise and Pandaemonium, you and your polar opposite of a dance partner must synchronize your movement to make your way across the gymnasium, achieving objectives on the way to teenage stardom. It’ll take all of the coordination you and your partner have to not step on each other's feet, and that’s before you take into account making the most of the night by checking off every item in your itinerary! Steal the show and dance your way to the top of the class… or fail and die of embarrassment!

In Action

Game Design

Pre-Production

  • Game Jam Theme: It Takes Two To Tango

  • Our group wanted to create a two-player dancing game

  • What would make our dancing game unique:

    • Unconventional control scheme​

    • Set at a high school prom slow dance; justifies awkwardness of the controls

  • I was tasked with designing and developing player movement and enemy behavior

Player Movement

  • Goals for player movement

    • capture the awkwardness of high school prom​

    • require teamwork; creating communication between players was a must

First Iteration

  • As a team, we decided players cannot separate

    • Players work together to control a singular entity​​​

  • To match the theme of slow dancing, I decided players should constantly be spinning

  • ​Players can only move if both pressing a movement key (WASD or arrow keys)

  • This iteration didn't capture the awkwardness; player character rotation didn't affect the movement

Above is a later iteration of the character. The characters spin counterclockwise at the speed displayed above.

Second Iteration

  • Kept the requirement of both players needing to press a key to move

  • New addition: each player's forward key is in relation to each character's forward position

    • Since each character faces the other, pressing 'W' and up arrow does nothing​

    • To move forward, one player would have to press their forward key and the other their backward key

  • New addition: the player character moves according to its rotation​​​

    • Extremely difficult to move in a straight line​

Final Iteration

  • Another team member added R Shift and 'F' keys as interact buttons

  • Implemented art assets created by team's artists

  • Adjusted player movement speeds and rotation speed

Enemy Behavior

  • Enemies are other students trying to steal your shine

  • If players bump into them, they will view players as lame

  • The Popularity Bar controls the loss condition: too many bumps into enemies will deplete the bar

  • ​Goals for enemy behavior:​​

    • Random movement​

    • Damage to the popularity bar

    • Feedback to indicate collision between players and enemies

Test Iteration

  • Utilized a 2D navmesh package

  • Navmesh was created in a donut shape

    • Enemies can freely move around the gymnasium​

    • Enemies are prevented from immediately bumping into players

  • Random movement

    • Enemies will select a random direction in a unit circle​

    • Move in that direction by a predetermined distance

    • After a few seconds, they will select another random direction

    • If enemies get in eachother's way, they will select another random direction

Final Iteration

  • Implemented assets created by artists

  • No changes to enemy behavior

  • Thorough internal playtesting, I saw there was a lack of feedback to indicated collisions between players and enemies

  • ​New additions:​

    • added knockback to enemies on collision​

    • added SFX and VFX for more feedback and juice

  • Icons created in Photoshop

  • Created VFX using Unity's particle system

  • A particle effect will play at the enemy's position on collision

  • Implemented SFX created by the musician

Post Mortem

In the past, my experience with game jams had not been that great. The last time I did the Texas Game Jam, my group didn't even have a finished product. With a couple more years of game dev experience and an amazing team, I was really satisfied with my work for this game jam.

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Through this project, I saw how having a diverse group of people with different skill sets is key in creating a game. Having many unique perspectives on how we could carry through with our game only helped us. The premise of the game itself only came about because we were all bouncing ideas off of each other on the first day. I felt the game successfully brought the player to feel the stress of trying to become teenage royalty. The unconventional control scheme also successfully brought players to work together to win, but also captured the awkwardness of a prom slow dance.

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I've never really been into making 2D games, but because most of the team was experienced in 2D, I tried my hand at it. Of course, I quickly figured out that what matters isn't the dimensions of the game, but just how fun it is. I hope to participate in more game jams in the future.

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Check the link below to play the game, learn more about the other mechanics, and meet all the cool people who made this game possible.

Itch Page

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