Eugene Tam
Game Developer

I will be talking about the game and the overall process of making it. Once again, I would like to stress my gratitude towards my very talented team mates - Eka, Chris and KC. Since it's 36 hour game jam (only 30 in truth), our team have actually achieved what we planned through a series of hard work and proper work distribution.  

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The theme for the game jam was "kid-centric" game and we were given choice to use any of the IP that they provided. After knowing each other from the group and having a short discussion. We decided to focus on making a game that are fun to make and play instead of trying to shoehorning the IP into our ideas. In the very beginning session, I came out with the main premise of making a cooperative game that allow parents to have fun and spend time together with their child instead of just entertaining the kid. After going through several discussion and brain storm session, we have to decide to make a coop puzzle solving game that allow parents to enjoy the planning and strategies part of the game while the kid will have the thrill of destroying the enemies. We have decide to follow the game designing philosophy that I have lay down which is let the player do things that they are good in and feel empowered while they are doing it. 

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We were one of the more faster team among the participant teams as we proceed from pre-production to development phase within just 1 hour but this is when a very important incident happen. The one and only Mr Wan Hazmer, one of the lead game designer that worked on Final Fantasy XV have visited our team. After he listened to my pitch on our game, he have point out that we are too focus on the technical part (Mechanic and System) of the game and advised us to pay more attention of what experience are we trying to bring to our players but he did point out that we are the only team that are building a game that focus on parents-children relationship which he is happy with. We immediately stop working and just spend 1 hour talking about what we use to like and face when we were kids. Those discussion about our childhood experience and fear helped us to nail down a lot of game design and experience that we hope our player will get playing our game. Some of the major decision are making the monster in the form of a kid's fear such a rotan (Cane) and Broccoli, adding in more interactive traps that are again in a more relatable form such a pillow and alarm clock and the change of game title from "Stay Connected" to "Parental Guidance" in the later part of the development. 

 

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I would like to highlight few game design decision that I think is extreme important for the game here. First off, the game doesn't have a proper story as we want the parents to be the one that are telling the story they want like how our parents use to do when we are still kids. The over game play is pretty simple, there will be only two phase, the setup phase where parents get to put down traps and the second phase, the runner phase where the kids play as the "runner" running around the map staying alive and leading monsters into the traps. We decide to give the runner the ability to push back instead of killing in order to teach them the power of proper planning and communication instead of brute strength. 

 

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I am very proud to announce officially that our game have won the Third Place in the Level Up KL 2016 SEA Game Jam, I'm very glad that our hard work are recognised and extremely delighted for the experience that I have gain through the whole event. If you are interested to play the game, please just send me a request message through any of the social media link that I provided. I will try my best to send you the game or just show you the game in person.