It has been a wild week, my friends, so let me get into it.

In my opinion, Back Four Seconds was a resounding success and one my proudest Game Jam accomplishments to date, getting into the Top 100 in several categories of Ludum Dare 46. With this year's GMTK Jam, I was determined to replicate some of that success.

With a tighter deadline, my project was somehow more ambitious than the last. Not only was I realising a fully 3D game, something that I've never done for a released game before, but I was keeping my narrative-focus, as well giving accessibility options and more general polish. I like the concept of M for Mature mechanically, and it went through several iterations throughout the given 48 hours. I don't think this is the end for where you can take it, far from it, but I think it is a neat enough demonstration of the mechanic that then feeds into the characters and the narrative.

But, alas, destiny had other plans. In the final hour of the competition a considerable amount of my lifes were irreparably lost. Given my lack of technical clumsiness and my usually rigorous version control, this was a first in terms of just how much work was gone, and certainly something that I will do everything in my power to prevent in the future. However, it just one hour, I managed to recreate enough to have a full functioning game as an entry for the jam. I imagine it wasn't rated too highly, but I hope that those who played it at least enjoyed it for the narrative and story.

But it is a week later, and in the downtime from working on my first commercial game, PixelSmith, I have worked to recreate what was lost and more! With a cool trailer to boot!

The "Definitive Edition" (which just sounds cool, I'll likely keep updating it if further bugs or QoL improvements come up) has the following features:

• An Ending
• A Main Menu
• Audio, Control and Accessibility Options
• Bugfixes!
• Considerable Graphical Improvements!
• A fully realised 3D Map
• Major Gameplay Improvements

That last one is very interesting. Originally, losing health on a movement control would reduce your movement speed, similarly to how the abilities work, but I found this to be very restrictive and tended to lock progression (a problem of 90% with the "Out of Control" games in this jam) so I flipped the scales and went back to my Procedural roots and made is so that your movement direction would change erratically if you had lower health on a movement control in that direction. Makes the movement feel like you're drunk on hard difficulties and looks pretty smooth too.

"Bugfixes" doesn't even begin to describe it though. Not only were there tonnes of gameplay bugs, and even more than I made "features" but I finally reached a breaking point with Unity WebGL. Thankfully, using some templates I found online and refactoring every damn texture and sound so they wouldn't bug out, the current build works pretty well, but as you might notice, the WebGL build is one version behind the Windows, Mac and Linux builds because the "wobble" effect on the Dialogue Box, which I built on ShaderGraph, would just DESTROY itself on WebGL. I'll reproduce in GLSL and see if that helps but if not, then the PC builds are technically the more "Definitive" versions.

It's amazing that I'm 14 jams in and I'm still learning so much. Like how Unity's Input system just has NO customisability during run-time. I've never had control options before but it baffles me they never thought to include it, let alone the industry fix is to just buy a £50 add-on, which I can't really afford. Fully creating and texturing my own 3D models was a tonne of fun, I think everything looks super cute and I can't wait to do this kind of work 10x over when it comes to Pixelsmith.

I have a lot more to say about the more LGBT-specific values I wanted to put in this game, as well as how I tried to make my single-dev game more diverse, without telling a perspective I have no right to tell but those are stories for another day. I ALSO have a LOT to talk about how this jam has been handled and what kind of ideals it's pushing towards the industry at large but I'm far from the only one with a gripe and I'm probably one of the more biased, plus I respect Mark Brown a great deal and understand it's coming from a place of fairness.

However, the whole experience has made me more dedicated to focus on my more personal, less jam-specific, projects and I'm really hoping to round out my portfolio with a properly "shipped" game. If you'd be interested in that, give me a follow as there'll be more news shortly!