The submission date for GB Compo 21 was fast approaching. Initially, I thought we would be able to get four world's completed before the end but that was always going to be way too ambitious. In particular, coding mechanics for a Universal Master Scene like pushable rocks and fillable holes and then implementing checks for when they could fall down a hole, or get pushed by magnets and then end up underground was such a mind bending problem to solve in GBS 2beta5 for Ben, that we thought it best to start cutting content. We wanted to make sure the art and cutscenes could be completed and ensure enough time to debug the game before posting it. So we settled for three worlds.

As I mentioned in an earlier log, we were working around the clock for the last two weeks straight. Well sort of, three days before the end of the jam my wife gave birth to my second daughter. Perhaps this is a little over the top but I brought my laptop into the hospital and would debug while my little one slept (I got quite a few questionable looks from the midwives). Ben was scrambling to get the last of the cutscenes finished off but we managed to get everything done in the end. I can tell you that it was quite a stressful and exhausting time!

Submissions closed and I could take a break to spend time with my family and Ben could finally relax too as we patiently awaited the results of the jam. For months we waited… the amount of submissions was absolutely massive and it kept the judges busy for way longer than they had anticipated. Eventually the results came in and… we won! Both of us were thrilled! We knew that Unearthed was worth continuing at this point and committed ourselves to releasing a full experience with much more content in time.

Since then we have been steadily (and sometimes not so steadily) plugging away at the project. Slowly turning a 36 puzzle jam game with minimal play-testing into a full version with over 80 puzzles with lots of iteration and play-testing!

So, after a period of rest post jam, we returned to brainstorming mechanics, ready to design more worlds. Now that time wasn’t an issue, we were free to slow right down (we had admittedly burned ourselves out during the jam) and explore ideas more carefully. Something that we didn’t have much time to explore properly during the jam was how we could integrate a deeper story into the game’s progression. This time around, we would try to build each world's mechanics, theme and aesthetics in tandem with the story so that all the elements would support one another.

In the next Devlog, I'll be taking you through some of the story of Unearthed and how it changed over time.

Happy Gaming!

Tom (Gumpy Function)