One week has passed since I released Eulogy for Nonno for the $109 Adventure Game Challenge, so I think it’s time for a short retrospective on the project.
Before the jam
I was looking forward to the jam because not only this is the series that sparked my love for game jams, but also because I hadn’t been making games for almost a year now after I released the demo for Help, I’m being silenced and went through a period of no time and no inspiration. On the week preceding the jam I cleared some dust off my pen tablet, drew a couple of images for Pixel Dailies and checked the new PowerQuest version to see what had changed since last time.
Then on Friday evening, two days before the start, I hurt my wrist during a football game. The x-ray didn’t show any fractured bones so I’ve been given a wrist brace. Luckily it was my left hand, so I could still write and draw, but typing was painful and slow.
The dream
I usually take the train to the office at 6:00 on Monday, so I went to sleep very early on Sunday evening. I woke up at around 23:30 though, 30 minutes after the jam had started, so I figured I’d quickly check the jam page to read the theme, thinking “who knows, maybe it’ll influence my dreams”. And it did. I dreamed that I was walking around town and a well dressed, mobster looking guy stops me and starts talking to me as if I were a long lost cousin. I try to tell him that I’m not who he thinks, but he won’t listen and tells me that I have to pay respect to grandma, because it’s the day of grandpa’s the funeral. He forces me into a house and there’s a lot of people, all elegantly dressed, waiting in line to give their condolences to nonna. As I step in, many people look at me with side eyes and I can hear them mumble things like “how dare he show up like this”. I feel very uncomfortable and try many times to leave, but they wouldn’t let me. It’s finally my turn to meet the old grandma who, in my dream, was played by my mom. Two guys in a suit who are clearly armed stand besides her. She asks me if I’m still in contact with “that girl”. I have no idea what she’s referring to so I try to stay as vague as I can, but I have the cold sweats. A couple more questions, then I tell I really have to leave and they let me. As I turn around, grandma asks “will you be there tomorrow?” and I reply “uh, yeah, sure, see you tomorrow”. To which, everyone stops and looks at me. The “cousin” who brought me in says “tomorrow is Monday“. I don’t know why, but they understood I’m not their cousin. And as I run away, yelling “I tried to tell you I’m not your cousin”, they start to shoot me.
The brainstorming phase
On the train to work I took out my new notebook and started writing. Doing things on paper was something new for me, but the wrist was still hurting too much. As usual I wrote down a couple ideas – the dream, a vacation swap with a lookalike (inspired by a mid-90s Donald Duck story from Italy), a medical mishappening, a romantic date or breakup on behalf of someone else – and weighed the chances of jokes, dialogues, puzzles and plot development. I usually do this to let ideas brew while I work in the office and I can come back to them later, but this time I knew deep in my heart that I wanted to go with the dream. Despite the anxiety inducing setting, I felt a sense of adventure that I wanted to bring to the players. In fact, after I started writing down a possible three act structure for the funeral game, I was so involved that I didn’t even touch the other ideas anymore.
Developing the idea
I always follow the same formula for game jams: a short, self contained first act that sets the tone and offers a couple of puzzles, a wider second act where many puzzle chains intertwine, and maybe a very short third act with a single easy puzzle just to give the player a satisfying ending. But my main concern this time was how to insert puzzles in the story. Remembering how I felt when being asked questions during the dream, I figured I could go for an exploration / deduction game with fewer puzzles sprinkled here and there to restrict access to valuable information. The eulogy was the first thing I settled for, the very first line in my notebook reads “ending could be eulogy where you have to show you learned enough about nonno”, and, well, nothing changed since. I settled pretty quickly on a first act where you have to get dressed, a second one where you investigate, and the eulogy as the final act.
Actual development
I went for my usual strategy of drawing and implementing the first act right away. Not only it allows me to deliver something if I don’t manage to complete the game, it also often sparks new ideas for the puzzle or the plot. I know most people suggest to fill your game up with programmer art and have it playable first, but that won’t work for me. But please, don’t follow my example. At the end of day 3 my first room was complete and I also had an intro cutscene. However, I had no idea what I’d do for the second act. Especially, how to structure the eulogy in a way that is suitable for an adventure game. Then it hit me: AI. I really loved the idea of Tony being all like “I wrote you a template” and then it turns out it was just a quick ChatGPT query and that’s the reason why you have to fill it up yourself. So I even wrote down the way ChatGPT always tries to offer its image generation services, as a way of telling players “not only the touching eulogy Tony promised you has been made by AI, but Tony can’t even properly select the relevant text and just printed the whole reply”.
Boy, did it backfire. Many people asked me if I used AI for the game.
NO I DIDN’T. THAT WAS JUST A JOKE.
Anyway, the categories were born. Favorite food, however, was meant to be favorite hobby, and it was meant to be a more observational puzzle, with old pictures of nonno and stuff in his studio that hinted at a couple of possibilities, and dialogue by the family members to direct you. I wasn’t too convinced, though. I spent the first week drawing rooms and characters, and coding some small “obstacle” puzzles (e.g. the dog) that were unrelated to the end goal. One week later art was mostly done, but I still didn’t have any puzzles. That’s when I decided to bring food to the picture. I mean, I had a kitchen already. This is why I tend to intertwine drawing and designing.
Game over
The game was becoming very light hearted, as are all my games, but I wanted to reproduce that feeling of unease I felt in my dream, the way a bad reply meant I was done for good. So I decided to add a game over mechanism, and watching footage of testers and streamers makes me think I reached my goal. The first time they get hit with it, it’s devastating. Luckily for the player, I’m not a sadistic maniac: there’s an autosave and you can retry right away. But even then, the player starts to feel that the stakes are higher. I don’t think the game would have been as good if I disallowed the early game over.
Playtesting
During jams I’m constantly idea dumping to a couple of friends, who are then the first people who try my game. If they find issues in the puzzles despite already knowing what the game is going to be like, that means I really need to make changes. Being my first deduction game, I had to do many iterations this time, because while it’s impossible to stop players from bruteforcing a solution, I want at least reduce the chances. “Early” playtesting was vital for this game. I even added a completely new puzzle and redraw the genealogy tree in the last days.
Overall remarks
I’m very satisfied with how the game turned out. I think it’s fun to play, can make people laugh and also think. It’s probably very easy when compared to my other games – there aren’t many puzzles with strange and convoluted solutions or mechanics – and you don’t even need to solve them all to finish the game, but it’s still a 30 to 60 minutes experience, and that’s a lot for a game made in 14 days. I’m not too happy that the food puzzle works the same as the motto puzzle, after releasing it I had ideas on how to make it a bit different and more challenging, but… this is a jam game. It’s good enough. Also on the next Monday I had an MRI because my wrist was still hurting and it turned out I do have a fracture so I spent the last week away from the computer.