What is Zoomies ?
During the end of July 2024, one of the biggest Game Jam in the world happened. Some friends and I decided to give it a try, some without any knowledge in game developing (including me).
At friday evening, we met and discovered the theme of this year : Build to Scale
Very soon, lots of ideas came to our mind. Should we build a game about scolarship ? About how democracy works ? And then… cats. Why cats ? Because who doesn’t like cats ? And what people likes more than cats ? Videoconference (ok this one came into my mind without knowing why, don’t ask me how my brain works).
The story
You’re hired in a company who sells a videoconference software (like Zoom, you get it ? Cat ? Zoom ?) built with AI that automatically focus on user’s face. But there’s a problem… They didn’t hire a developer. So you have to manually do the job, because you’re waaay cheaper than an AI developer. If you’re fast enough, people will start to notice, and you’ll be fired. Act quickly !
How it was developed ?
We’re a team of 5 : 2 dealt with coding, 2 with graphics and story and the last one with sound. As you know (or maybe not ?), I usually do bip boup on my computer, so I was coding.
Game engine
We used the famous Godot Engine, which I just discovered 1 hour before starting the jam. It uses different views : 2D/3D scene, and script. The 2D/3D allows us to place our assets where we want, put a camera, paint, etc… and the script view connects everything together : what this button does, how life points are managed, how fast you’ll be fired…
Zoomies looks like a 2D game, but is in fact multiple 3D “games” (with 2D assets) inside a 2D game. It was this part where we really strugle to implement. It’s easy to to 2D inside 3D, but the other way around is something else. But we managed (thanks to my team mate’s incredible skills) to have something nice !
Assets
Having code is great, but if you have nothing to show, it’ll get pretty boring. Just look at our first cat :
(I actually love them)
But players wants something cuter. That’s where our famous artists did a great job with those beautifuls assets :
There’s a lot more, so don’t hesitate to play to find them all !
Dialogue
Another part of the game was the dialogues. Remember, you’re hired to fix user’s camera, but they don’t know you’re watching them. We tried to make this part really fun and it was one of the most appreciated !
Music
Everything you hear during the game was homemade ! The music, the meow meow meow… everything ! Fun fact, when cats are saying meow, it was recorded in a bedroom with someone saying multiple times meow.
At the end
Finally, the game is over (ok it was not the game but rather the jam’s timer). pfiou People’s seems to like it !
so as the score !!
There was 7643 published games, it means we are in the 7% top games 🎉 (with a high score for creativity)
What’s next ?
Our team was awesome, it was really fun during those four days. So expect us to develop new games :)
I forgot, here’s the link to play !
Play Zoomies