Reflecting on some more jam games
It’s been another couple of years since we started making games together at Nahar, and since then we’ve changed our name from Nahar Entertainment to Nahar Studios, and made a few more jam games. We haven’t had as much time to dedicate to the studio recently as we approached our final year of highschool and first year of college, but as a studio the quality of our games has definitely improved (in most cases).
Novel Alchemy
This game was an odd one to work on. We weren’t all that keen on the idea we went with and didn’t really feel like it would be that enjoyable to play. We kind of just went with it because we were strapped for time, although I wish I had put more into the development as it’s very rough around the edges. This was also the first jam game with Gedudo, our amazing new artist, and they produced some incredible animations!
Unfortunately we over scoped in that area and they didn’t have time to make all the animations we needed. I tend to struggle a lot with combat based games, so the game didn’t really feel the best. I have yet to perfect the formula for good combat. As a team we definitely do better with puzzle style games, both mechanically and in level design. The game was rushed and over scoped, so we definitely aren’t too happy with this one.
The team was also really big this time, so I struggled to manage them well, but I am getting better at it! Our new sound engineer megalo made his jam debut here, with an incredible collection of tracks, some of which we were unable to utilise due to time constraints. Hashe also made his jam debut here, and his UI and menu designs were honestly amazing, although I think we could probably improve the in game UI in the post-jam.
Play it here
CaterPanic!
This was a really fun one to make. Before this, I had to take a break from making games because of exams and school work, so it felt really great to be able to break back into it with this. This jam project felt like a culmination of all the experience I have been building over the years individually as well as the evolution of our work as a team. 3 different player controls with unique movement mechanics, interesting levels, 3 different environments with their own rules and mechanics, a banger main theme, and the subtle improvements made over previous jams which came from experience, all combining to produce this game.
It was also our first jam with our amazing new artist Timmy. She managed to produce almost all of the art for this jam as well as producing some beautiful promotional art, which is a first for one of our jam projects.
We only had a week to complete this jam as we had started working on it late due to conflicting schedules, but it turned out to be just the right amount of time to get some playtesting done and tweak the levels and fix some bugs on the final day. The only gripe people had with this game was the controls for switching evolutions being a bit convoluted, which is a simple fix. Overall this was a pretty good one!
Play it here
A Troubled Double
This game was a blast! I think so far it has definitely been the most solid and well refined idea we’ve worked on so far, and definitely the most stylised game so far. I initially joined the jam on my own because I wanted to test my skills as a game dev working alone rather than with a team. When I learned what the theme of the jam was, however, I had such a clear idea for a jam game with a strong vision for it and I just couldn’t make it work without getting some help from an artist, so I reached out to our relatively new artist Timmy, who worked on CaterPanic. I let Timmy handle the ‘lore’ and setting of the game, and I would do all of the gameplay and music. She ended up coming up with the cheeky twins we have today.
Mid way through our 3 weeks of development, we encountered an issue. Timmy’s stylus broke, and she was in a place where she couldn’t get a replacement for weeks. We sat for days wondering what to do, until it came to me. Timmy could draw on pencil and paper in a rough sketchy style and we could have all the assets and environment fit that vibe. This would save on asset production time and give our game a unique look. It worked!
Towards the end of the jam I started running into a bit of a crunch situation where I had to balance the music, level design, and asset integration all at once, and decided to offload the music to Ahmood, who did incredibly well with what I had left him in the time frame left behind, creating a track which fit the feel of the game and sounded amazing on its own.
We plan to do a post-jam for this, since we really loved the idea and so did the people who played, and decided to make a full version of this game. Among the critiques we received were that the levels were less puzzle and more trial and error, which we’ll definitely rectify, and also that the visuals were a bit inconsistent. Overall though, this is my solid favourite. Definitely going to commit to a strong post-jam project on this.
Play it here