The prototype

For this GameJamPlus we could pick one theme out of three, what we chose is Small Scope, Big Fun. We started on Friday at 17:00, the deadline was Sunday at 16:00.

The idea behind it was pretty clear: we wanted to try a couch-co-op setup, mixing a tiny bit of the REPO with Spy Party elements. No PvP though! Duo of players where one loots and the other covers him (shoots).

Surprisingly, for the first attempt at 3D in Godot, we managed to implement most of what we aimed for:

• two-player split-screen,
• hitscan shooting,
• enemies focusing only one player,
• collectibles you need to beat the level,
• a small atmospheric “town” arena,
• working animations.

Maybe it’s not a giant feature list, but considering this was our first time touching half of these systems in 3D, a lot clicked into place.

What went well

The fact that so many systems actually work.

Most of the team is more focused on 3D modeling (in Blender), but everyone jumped between tasks, and somehow most of the core gameplay came together. Considering the time, experience, and amount of unknowns — we did the major majority of what we aimed for.

For a tiny weekend project, that felt good.

What did not went well

We had some vision changes throughout the project, not because we could not implement something but because not all of us could make it to the planning step, when the jam first started.

Besides that, the biggest struggle for me was animations. or rather implementing them in-game. For our main animator and characters designer as well. None of us had real experience with the Blender → Mixamo → Blender → Godot pipeline, so half the battle was just getting the imports to work in-engine (skill isse :c). Luckily, once the animations were inside Godot, wiring them up was much simpler.

Level design was also a first-time challenge for one of my teammates, so the whole team was constantly learning, improvising or swapping roles on the fly.

We had to cut or simplify a few thing to make it in time:

• the shooting player originally was supposed to move on the rooftops, covering the looter from above but we had to merge their movement paths,
• we did not get to use most of the decorations,
• the second player animation also does not rotate where the camera of his looks,
• no one has any death animation.

Anecdote & what we learned

At one point I accidentally made enemy's every detection area a hit zone. Which made his zone detecting the Player also act as his invisible bullterproof shield. You could only shoot him if you were close enough to physically step inside his detection bubble.

Looking back at our previous game jam projects, it's good we sticked to the very small scope, small gameplay loop project and will continue to do so. For the next jam:

• have only one person to work on the level and be prepared for it!
• do not be late (me),
• don’t improvise the workflow for animations ever again,

• and double-check collision areas unless you want bulletproof enemies.

Conclusion

Over the next 1–3 weeks we want to polish this how we originally (and better) envisioned it to be single-level prototype that feels complete on its own. Nothing huge, nothing endless, just a cleaned-up, playable slice of the idea and learning project for workflow in 3D.
If it turns out promising, maybe there’s space for more later. If not, it’ll still be a solid, finished jam project :)

Assets, crew, credits & tools

Our team is all listed on the screenshot attached (from the left to right): Ghgh, Felipe, Wujo (me), Kacper, Roxi.

Assets used:

• Greybox Textures – bluwhitebear CC BY 4.0 https://bluwhitebear.itch.io/no-nonsense-grey-box-textures
• Godot Head (Low Poly) CC BY 3.0 https://opengameart.org/content/low-poly-godot-bot-logo
• Gewehr 98 Rifle – Gabrilink03 CC BY 4.0 https://skfb.ly/pu7TC
• Crosshair & Muzzle Flash – Kenney CC0 https://kenney.nl
• Graffiti City https://www.dafont.com/graffiti-city.font
• Don Graffiti https://www.dafont.com/don-graffiti.font

Tools Used: Godot 4.5, GitHub, GitKraken, Blender, Substance 3D Painter, Mixamo, Discord.