Game Jams are a brilliant way to leverage several core aspects of game development in such a short span of time. Project EGG was just that. Developed over the course of a 21 days with a team of 4. Designed as a fun and comical animal shooter in which one would valiantly protect their flock of chickens by launching eggs at the night-terrors (foxes).
The core loop for Project EGG is simple:
The secondary component to this loop in the event the player fails the first component:
The experienced player would utilize the mission component of the design to collect supplies for coops before they inevitably got destroyed.
Maintaining 100% on hunger and thirst will result in the regeneration of health points.
Project EGG also features a micro-game bonus in the form of an accuracy/consistent hit counter, resetting if an egg ever misses a fox. Reaching a certain xMultiplier of 5 or greater within this system would grant the player a speed and damage boost (and a neat little particle trail).
Gameplay consists of heavy and light attacks of shooting eggs out of your player-chicken, eating reeds, drinking from the central pond, and collecting resources. The mission is to protect all 5 chicken houses from being torn apart by the foxes that come out at night for as many (increasingly difficult) days as possible.
Chickens can be given missions to collect resources for you. Each day brings more and more foxes from multiple directions.
Project EGG uses Unreal Engine 4 and was built majoritively in C++ and some blueprint. The project featured stat-incentivised AI, moderate enemy AI and a high-stakes gameplay loop. The comical game took a total of 21 days to bring to life and was designed by Developd in the first day, with the secondary loop added half-way through.
The light/quicker attack was added in the last few days while doing playtests. It is mostly likely that it is impossible to get past a certain day of the game as the amount each reed gives you vs. time to eat it is unbalanced. The highest day recorded was Day 5, and as with all game jam games: it is buggy and would need far more polishing if ever slated for a proper release.
The project demanded the use of:
Overall, this was a fun little game to construct rather early on with a small team and was a nice submission to the 2020 DevSquad New Game Jam. Go on and check it out!
