Project Type: Game Jam Project
Software Used: Unreal Engine, Aseprite, Audacity
Language Used: Unreal Blueprint
Primary Role: Game Designer, Assets Artist, Programmer
Play my game here: https://sugarcow.itch.io/hehe-television
Hehe Television was made in a 7 day game jam, Scream Jam 2024. The theme for is jam was TV screen and the secondary theme was "Dont touch that dial!". Since this was solo effort, I knew that I had to keep my scope small and keep the game simple but the horror effective. I had experience with 1 bit art style from a past game jam and so I decided to go with the 1 bit look once again. This lead me to looking into old black and white cartoons from the 1950s -1960s.
Theme: TV, Dont Touch that Dial
Hehe Television is a game about a cursed television that was sent to the player by their older brother who thrift it from a mysterious thrift store. Upon turning on the TV the player encounters a series of messages... Can you find all of the clues to decipher the hidden message?
Inspiration:
Courage The Cowardly Dog
Wheres Waldo
salad fingers
Mechanics:
-The game starts out with a series of channels that the player can flip through.
-As the game progresses the channels will start becoming more sinister and unhinged.
-The player is tasked with finding hidden clues throughout each channels with the help of hints given.
-Each clues may not appear immediately in each channel and will appear throughout the game play duration.
-Some Channels channels are Animated in Aseprite and some will be Gifs of old scenes from old tv shows.
-The game ends when the player finds all of the clues.
Personal Experience:
I grew as both a game developer and designer from this experience. I understood my own limitations and that I was working alone to develop this game. I kept the scope small, limiting the controls to a single mouse click and incorporating only a handful of interactions.
Horror games rely much more on the appeal and atmosphere, so I had to iterate quickly on the prototype to ensure the base mechanics were done properly, allowing me to move on to the art assets for the game. Designing was the challenging part of this project. The initial idea I had for the game was to create a reverse "Where's Waldo Game," where if the player encounters a channel with an unusual entity that doesn't belong and lingers for too long, they would lose. However, after implementing the base mechanics, I found that the unusual entities were too easily found because the sprite I made for the channel was too small compared to the unusual entities. If I had made the entity faces smaller, they would be unrecognizable, so I had to make some adjustments to the mechanics. From there, I iterated and discarded multiple approaches to my idea.
This was when I sought additional inspiration. I started looking into old cartoons from the past and found that many of them fit perfectly with the aesthetic of my game. I searched for GIFs of old cartoons and shows, ensuring that they were royalty-free to use. After cropping, resizing, and recoloring the GIFs, the TV acquired a nice retro feel. I polished the game further with sounds from pixabay.com to ensure the atmosphere of the game matched the art assets. I didn't want any background music for gameplay but rather relied solely on the music that would come out of each channel.
Overall, this experience bolstered my abilities as a game developer and designer even more. I received a lot of positive feedback for the game, which motivated me further to continue making fun games for all to enjoy.