Slime game is a top-down, 2D puzzle game made for a game jam with the theme "you are your worst enemy". In this game, the player must reach the food before any of the other slimes, which move based on the player's inputs.
During the game jam, we formed a team of 7 people because none of us had a lot of time to commit to the game jam. We distributed tasks between us as much as possible to make the team work. Our team chose to create a game where the player controls the movement of the enemies in addition to yourself. The player is a green slime who is trying to reach the carrot before any of the other slimes. Every slime moves at the same time in different directions based on which arrow key the player presses and the color of the slime. Since the player has control over the movement of the enemy slimes, that makes them their worst enemy. For an added challenge, players can try to find ways to complete each level in the fewest possible moves!
My role in this project was primarily the lead programmer. I created a dynamic grid system that allowed game designers and other programmers to easily implement new features that depend on a tile-based system. The system creates a dynamically updating static reference to a table of all the tiles loaded in the game. Coordinates can be efficiently checked by using a dictionary to access any tile. Since the system uses a dictionary, the grid size is completely dynamic and does not need to be pre-defined.
After the game jam ended, I and a few teammates continued to work on the game. I took over leading the project and made the decision to submit the project to the WPI booth for PAX East in 2024. I organized all the tasks and distributed work among the team. I took the lead on marketing our work, creating a poster for PAX and writing dev-logs on itch.io.
Slime game is one of my favorite games that I have worked on at the moment because it is so simple in terms of functionality, yet it has the potential for very interesting puzzles and gameplay. I plan to continue to update the game for at least another few months, when I have time.
The Team
Bashar Alquassar: Original Producer (during game jam)
Max Allen: Current Producer (after game jam), Marketer, Lead Programmer
Sarah Hatch: UI Designer, Level Designer, Programmer
Brian Suria: UI Designer, Programmer
Zach Pitts: Programmer
Casey Costa: Pixel Artist, Music Artist
Ethan Putch: Pixel Artist