What I Learned
I participated in all design decisions, then I mainly worked on programming. I wrote most of the game's code, and it is by far the project with the hardest challenges I had to face. I also chose all of the sound effects and worked on level design.
The development of HeartBoy taught me a lot about time management. It is the third game week/jam I participated in, but it's the only one where we put out something this complete without working at night daily.
I understood how important it was to plan out in advance and share the workload between the three of us, we had to think about who could complete tasks the better. This is especially important in the context of a game week/any project with a brief development time.
HeartBoy is one of my favorite projects because it taught me a lot in a short time.
Concept
HeartBoy is a 2D side-scrolling platformer where you play as a cute heart-shaped creature we named "HeartBoy"
We embraced the theme by making it so players have to use their hearts (which also function as their health) as platforms to complete the levels.
Another unique aspect of the game is that due to the main mechanic, the player has to use UI at the same time as playing the character. Because of that, HeartBoy is only playable with a mouse and a keyboard.
Diegetic menus
We teach the drag & drop mechanic before the player even starts the game, we use the menu as a tutorial for this. Players need to use the mechanic to navigate menus.
The pause menu keeps a window open showing the game view
Affordance
We thought about using the shape of hearts to create a unique experience. The hearts (when placed) are used as level design elements, the rounder parts act as bumpers, and the sharp end kills enemies. It also sticks hearts to the ground, making it easier for players to use them as platforms.
Content
To have exciting Levels we needed to add more depth to the gameplay. To do so, we added all kinds of different hearts to the game.
Celeste Heart
Bumps you a lot higher
Snail Heart
Falls slower.
Normal Heart
Nothing special about it, can be used as a bumper or a weapon
Magic Heart
You can put it down anywhere, it is not affected by gravity whatsoever
XXL Heart
Expands in size when you put it down, cannot be used as a bumper
Polish
We wanted to make each heart unique and fun, first by using their different rules, but also by employing a different visual effect for each kind and various sound effects when placing them down.
For example here is the sound effect I chose for the magic heart
And the visual effect we made to suit it
Level Design
The game contains five different levels that become gradually harder.
We only kept very basic elements of the platforming genre throughout the game, we did this to emphasize the Heart-Placing mechanic. We were worried that by adding even more Level Design elements the player would be overwhelmed.
One level is 3-5 minutes long, checkpoints are spread across them. checkpoints are the only way to recover hearts and get new ones.
Quotes
At the start of each level, you can find quotes related to love and relationships. It added more depth because the quote often related to how we built the level.
This level is related to the quote by giving the player plenty of hearts to play with at the end. The player (HeartBoy, a heart himself) is holding a lot.
Graphics & Music
Graphics
We kept the visual aspect of HeartBoy simple. Everything is either black, white, or red. This aesthetic worked well because using simple shapes is expected in the genre and is easy to understand for players.
Juiciness is one of the key aspects of HeartBoy. We concentrated our efforts on it to bring enjoyable movements and interactions, despite being very simple mechanic-wise and having straightforward visuals.
Even the menus are juicy!
Start Menu...
End Menu/Winning Screen...
Music
We already mentioned sounds briefly in the past, but for the music, we ended up choosing a copyright-free "Lo-Fi" song, because we wanted to relax players.
To emphasize this choice, we made sound effects to blend in well with the music, such as the checkpoint one :
Post-Processing
In the post-processing, we used a "grain" effect to fit with the Lo-Fi genre as it uses low-quality instruments on purpose to make listeners feel old and nostalgic.
Retrospection
After a few months (HeartBoy was made in May), I can confidently say that it was a success. We won the game week, and we all learned a lot from it.
Even though we were praised for it, the game has some significant issues.
What went wrong:
❥ The pacing isn't consistent (sometimes situations are too hard for no reason).
❥ Levels often were too hard to understand.
❥ The Camera doesn't show all of the information players need.
❥ You can't cancel the placement of a heart once you grabbed it.
❥ The end menu doesn't use the drag & drop mechanic (the main menu does).
❥ We barely use enemies throughout the game (the offensive purpose of hearts is underused because of that as well)
Nonetheless, I'm very proud of how this game turned out.