The Jammy Game

This is a game about making grape jam. The player will experience the whole process of making the jam - from collecting grapes, to preparing them, to finally put the jam away. Every stage of this game plays differently and the player will find them being different characters in each stage, which adds more fun to this game.

Draft Concepts

I originally had three concepts. The first concept is about driving a car as a new driver. I thought this game has been done by many people so I skipped this game. The second concept was about painting. I would like to make this game as a medicating game, so that the player will gain peace by playing this game. I didn’t choose this concept because it might take too much time to accomplish, and the player might lose interest before they even finish painting. I finally decided to go with my third concept. It is about making grape jams so there will be multiple stages representing different steps of making the jam. I believe by using different mechanisms for each stage will add more fun to this game and keep the player interested while playing.

Final Game proposal

I would like to create a game of making grape jam to recall the memorable experience. In highschool, I went to pick wild grapes with my teacher, who is also my friend. It was late autumn, the weather was chilly just like now. We went to a field where there was a little brook, surprisingly there are still some wild grapes hanging on the vine. Due to the wildness, the grapes were very sour but they are healthy. Then we brought the grapes home, washed them, separated the pulp from the skin and squeezed out the juice. Next we mixed the grape juice, water, sugar and Gelatine in proportion, and started cooking them. Gently used low flame, we kept stirring the liquid until it became thicker - which means that the liquid is ready to transform into jelly. In this process, I had to keep stirring the liquid so that it does not spill out. The final step was to put the thick liquid into bottles and keep them in the refrigerator overnight.

Story Board

Stage 1:

The first step is to collect enough grapes for making the jam. The player has to collect at least 10 grapes to pass this stage.

Stage 2:

The second stage is preparing the grapes. The user will move the grapes across a maze, which represents the preparing process of making the grape jam. There are some viruses on the way, representing the insanitary elements during the preparation. To succeed at this stage, the player has to carefully move the grapes without hitting into the wall or running into viruses(the grape will be sent back to the origin if it encounters the wall or virus). Once the grapes are successfully moved into the destination, which is the pot, the player enters the final stage.

Stage 3:

At this stage, the jam has been made and all needs to be done is to put the jam into the fridge. The fridge is full of stuff, so once you open the fridge(enters this stage), all kinds of food start to drop down. The player needs to move the jam towards the assigned spot in the fridge, while avoiding being hit by the dropping stuff from the fridge. If the jam was hitted by any of the stuff, it will be sent back to the bottom and the player needs to restart the process. At this stage, the player gets 5 chances to try. Once the jam is put into the fridge, the process of making grape jam is completed.

Assignment Reflection

It was very challenging for me to make this game, because each stage of my game uses different mechanisms. But it feels so good to finally finish it! I meant to have four stages as the storyboard sketch showed, but I can’t figure out the third stage, which is a bummer. I changed the gameplay of the first stage. I originally planned to have the grapes falling down, but then I figured maybe clicking on the grapes makes more sense to mimic the process of picking the grapes - in real life, they don’t just fall down from the vine for you. The maze stage cost me the most time and I couldn’t connect the three stages without this stage being functional. I was originally trying a new method to build the maze in the grid(as shown in the image), but I failed to apply collision detection to this particular method, so I had to rebuild this stage and switch back to the old school way - hard coding every block as the wall, and use the collision detection to prevent the grapes to “run through” the wall. The last stage is actually more straightforward, I was able to fluently code out this stage by following Xin’s frog tutorial series. I coded each stage in separate files and combined them together when they are done. Right now there are still some bugs that need to be fixed, and I will try my best to do so. I need to add a final stage to show the winning message and allow the player to replay the game. I also plan to use a cute font and plug in background music in future improvements.

Resources

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