In January of 2015, I joined the one of my first Epic Jams and I ended up creating one of my own favorite game. It was about this scientist that had to assemble one machine to reduce the size of the sun, having only one minute left, he resets time just before it's too late. So the player has only one minute to solve each section of the game, only 2 in the jam version. Each level has its own art style and mechanic. The first (on the left) level of the game was similar to a handpainted level, the player has to understand the order of appearance of the platforms to complete the level. The second level (on the right) use some neon/space aesthetic, and the bottom and top of the level are connected together so that the player is forced to move vertically to complete the level. The game was simple and solid and had so much potential that I decided to kept developing the game, the only big problem was that it is a puzzle platformer, the most commercially unfamous genre.

The new design for the game had 8 levels instead of 2, it's still a small game overall, but much more polish and complete, designing all the levels was the biggest challenge, but a fun one indeed. All the levels had to be progressively harder while teaching the player new mechanics. Puzzle games usually rely on a cycle of teaching a new mechanic, squeeze all the potential out of mechanic, mixing it with all the previous ones, restart. The time limitations of the game allowed me to get only the best out of what I had without stretching everything too much.

Having to replay the same levels multiple times was not entertaining, so I made the experience smoother as many other improvements for the new version of the game, cleaning the aesthetic too. Being such a niche game though, with a heavy heart, I dropped this project before it was completed.

Replaying this game now, I can see where I was going, what I was trying to do and I liked it so much that I decided to finish the game in the future, so, for now, you can still play the original version of the game while waiting for the new one. Have fun!