The GMTK Game Jam happened once again in July 2022, and like the previous year, Thomas and I decided to participate. The jam started on a Friday, and we were able to begin right away. Thomas took a half day off of work, and I wasn’t busy at work that day, so I just kept an eye out in case I was needed at work while the jam started.
The night before the jam, I reviewed the code we had written last year for Malfunction, and naturally, I didn’t remember much about Unity, the game framework we used. Despite that, we used Unity this time around since we had more experience with it than any other framework.
The theme for the jam this year was “Roll of the Dice.” Our game idea ended up being a somewhat Sokoban-style puzzle game, but instead of pushing boxes around, the player pushes a 10-sided die around the screen. Each time it’s pushed, the die rolls a number. Some obstacles required rolling certain numbers, and there are other objects that need to be pushed around, set on switches, etc. We planned to implement enemies that you needed to fight as well, but we ran out of time.
I don’t remember why we went with “Grobble the Caveman” for our title and main character. Probably because it was absurd. This is the backstory behind the game:
Grobble the caveman was flying his airplane over the ocean. Suddenly he hits turbulence and the engines cut out. He crash lands on a remote island. Armed with only his wit and his lucky 10-sided rock, Grobble must brave the dangers of the island and find his way home.
For this jam, we made the game playable in a web browser, in addition to being available for download on the major desktop platforms. I hoped that more people would play it than played our game last year, since no download was required.
You can play the game at https://kedge8bc.itch.io/grobble-the-caveman.