Sammy's Treehouse - Game Jam Project

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Sammy's Treehouse is a game created for Global Game Jam in 2019 with the topic being "What home means to you". Along with Bartosz Pawlicki and Emilian Szyburski we decided to create a little home defense game. Though for Sammy home is not his family house but a tree house in the backyard where he can hide from everyday problems. Sadly Sammy can hear his parents arguing in the house which turns his playful fighting scenario into a nightmare.

I was the only graphic artist on the team so after agreeing on the idea I began with character creation. I had a rough idea of how could Sammy look like. Bright hair and kiddish outfit for adventure where nothing fit together. Throughout the process I pretty much stayed with the first idea only looking for different ways of execution.

Next I started creating the space for our game. I quickly sketched out the rough idea but then stumbled upon a difficulty. It was incredibly important to find the right colors to portray the story. The world had to be easily read as a kid's imagination but later on it had to carry some emotional weight with it. I found studying Ed, Edd and Eddy to be very helpful here as the whole show was based on kids and their playing time.

To amplify the feeling of fear and anxiety we used a couple of measures. One was creating different waves of enemies and the other focused on the scene and color. Going from light to dark, from day to night, from saturated to desaturated.

After creating the world it was time for the opponents. We had the idea of three separate waves of enemies. As Sammy heard more yelling and arguing from the house the more nightmarish the enemies would become. I designed 2 possible combinations. One with the a teddy bear that gets scarier and scarier and the second one, more lighthearted with a plush snake, teddy bear and a kitchen robot that makes you eat broccoli. We stuck with the first one.

Now all of the basics were done. It was time for the hard part - animation! I have not yet done any animation during a jam in such a short period of time so I was hesitant to start but once I did it came out pretty well. Sadly we did not have enough time to properly import the animations into the game engine. Here are some of the animations as designed by me:

One of the things that didn't get imported at all was the hit particle.

The enemies had a proper back swing to mark the attack and give some time to react. With time running out we could only import these animations into the game but couldn't sync them properly.

Here is a comparison between how I imagined the scene (left) and how it looks in the game (right). I am happy with the results but in game the key part - the arguing parents - is barely visible.

Here are some of the particles and effects. We had one on screen effect (the red lines in the corners) for when the tree house was being attacked. Also between each wave the player could choose one of three sets of items. There was a melee sword, ranged crossbow and a shield for blocking.

Overall this project was quite a challenge but it was extremely fun to work on and I am happy with the results. I've managed to create quite a lot of sprites but most importantly an art direction that conveyed the story and amplified the experience.
You can find the playable version of the game here:
Sammy's Treehouse
It is not perfect but it is winnable if you practice a little.

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